Before I Died
by MRegent.2 and Pangie
Summary: Each Soul Reaper is unique. They are shaped by the events of their lives...And their deaths. Previous lives are forgotten when one enters the Soul Society, but the scars left are not. This is the story of what happened to them before they died.
1. Forged in Blood

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of it's associated characters or fictional locations.

**Before I Died**

**Forged In Blood**

Everything was straight forward in the city. All buildings had their places. All people had theirs. You came and went when designated. No sooner no later.

And that was how it should be.

The Lord of the city enjoyed the order, he cut-and-dry way of looking at things. Order was law, and anyone who slipped out of the place he had made for them...Well, that was breaking the law.

And the only place for law breakers was the prison, a festering pit of disease and death whose very mention would cause fear to flicker in the hearts of the city-dwellers.

The Lord extended his rule to all aspects of his life. Everything was routine, set in stone. Up at five. Ready by seven. Exercise. Then to work. This rigid authority was held in place by a desire which swamped the Lord's heart, which made him tighten his hold over everything.

_Nothing must change_.

That was what he wanted. Everything must be constant, must be the same. He detested change.

After all, it was change which had robbed his beloved wife of her life. The birth of their daughter and the death of his wife were one and the same. Change killed her. Change was evil.

And change caused the birth of his daughter.

At first, the Lord tried to forget about her. He threw himself into his work and so, for a little while, the girl was allowed to flourish at the hands of nurses and maids terrified of the Lord but loving of this little child, a diamond in the dark.

But then she began to grow, began to be louder and more wild. She was warned against it, warned that she should not give in to her nature, and she would try not to. She would try.

And she would fail.

Then came the day that the Lord had had enough.

He called his daughter to his office, one which oversaw the entire city through a large window, out of which led a balcony. The balcony was dangerous and rarely used.

"You called me, father," the Lord's daughter announced herself in the rehearsed manner which sounded decidedly odd on the lips of a tiny child.

He had smiled. "So polite. Come in."

She came, feeling curious about this man who everyone told her was her father and who she should respect more than anything in the world. She felt no such respect, and that worried her.

"You have grown since you were a baby

This stating the obvious made her smile. "Of course I have, silly!"

A hand seized her arm. She winced. "_Don't insult me_."

"_I'm s-sorry_," she stammered, tears rushing to her eyes.

His eyes burned her. "Grown..._Changed_...I despise you, with all your noise. It must stop."

"Yes, it will," she told him.

"Will i?"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you." He took her to the window, out onto the balcony. "Do you see that?"

"Yes, I see it," she cried.

"That is what I worked for, order! A place where you don't need directions, where you could just follow any sign to where you need to go without anything messy or disorderly!" With that he picked up the little girl and dangled her over the balcony. He had planned the day, planned it so that none would be on that side of the building at that time, planned it to perfection. "That is what you must be like!" he bellowed, her screams or terror meaning nothing to his cold, cold heart.

No-one would know.

He had planned it to perfection.

Or so he thought.

One person saw. One person was bellow, heard those wild screams of terror punctuated with even wilder screams of rage, and had looked up. The Lord had not taken into account the homeless people. The people his system did not cater for, who had to fight for everything they had. This one man had learned that, if he wanted to survive, he had to be strong, stronger than anyone else, so he could protect himself...

And, at that moment, he made a crucial decision.

That he would be strong enough to protect whoever was screaming.

He looked up just as the Lord brought the girl back onto safe floor. It was the only balcony in the building. The homeless man went inside and asked the first person he saw, a cleaner, "tell me...who does the balcony belong to?"

"The balcony...That would be the Lord."

The man nodded. "One more thing. DO you have a job going here?"

They did.

After the little girl was brought back into the room her father said to her, in a cold voice as if nothing had happened, "that is what will happen if I hear you carrying on in that disorderly manner again." With that he sent her to her room. For days she would do nothing but huddle up in a corner and cry, hugging and rocking herself to sleep when no more tears would come.

Until, soon after this happened, a knock sounded on her door. She said nothing, being terrified it was someone to take her to her father again, who would take her and dangle her until she cried or worse...wet herself, which she had been very close to doing that terrifying day.

Eventually the door opened. A gruff voice said, "I'm just here to clean, ma'am." For a few minutes he bustled around, cleaning up, while she sat, arms clenched around her as if in protection, sat in frozen terror. "Why is such a little girl locked up in her room crying?" asked the man after a while.

She didn't look at him. "P-please don't take m-me to see my father," she begged without turning around, without being able to stop crying.

"If you don't want to do something then don't," he told her. "I won't make you."

She turned to him with large, tear-filled eyes. "You...won't?"

"Never."

After he left, the little girl came out of her room. She laughed and played in the same manner as before, only with one thing different. She now had an illogical and immense terror of heights. A few days after she came out of her room, she found her father had changed the maids and nurses. He continued doing this, hiring new people and firing the old ones so that the little girl had no time to attach herself to any of them. He supposedly thought this would stop the little girl playing in the way he called 'disorderly'. Eventually he was correct. Eventually she learned not to play with those new people who smiled at her but had no time for her, told her to 'go play'. But, at first, this only made her more interested. She couldn't remember any of the names for the new people, so she gave them funny nicknames which she would always remember. She did this with the cleaner man as well, who would always come to play with her. She called him 'Bruises' because he was always covered with the things, covered with them. She asked why many times but he only told her ht he got into a lot of fights. One day she, being bored, asked, "will you fight me?"

Without hesitation he had replied, "never."

But something had been n Bruises' mind for a while. He had seen the little girl's immense fear of heights and knew the reason. So one day he told the little girl something she would never forget.

"Never let someone make you afraid of something. And definitely don't let someone make you so afraid that you can't do something you want to."

She was never afraid of heights again. Even when her father took her out to the balcony and dangled her over she would laugh instead of scream.

She would later regret not pretending to still be scared.

By this time the girl had stopped bothering with the ever-changing maids and nursemaids. None of them were around for enough time to like, so she didn't bother. This made her get bored easily, so eventually she asked Bruises, "what do you do for fun?"

"I fight," he had answered as he cleaned. "Urgh, I hate this job..."

"You fight? Where?"

"In a place near the docks."

"Can I come."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"No. It's too dangerous."

She pouted. "You said I shouldn't be afraid"

"You shouldn't be stupid either."

"Please!" she continued. "I'm so bored here! I promise I would stay right by your side!"

She continued on in this manner until, finally, Bruises said with a great deal of exasperation, "fine! But it will have to be at night."

This didn't deter her, as he had hoped. "Okay!"

That night he took her out, sneaking into where they had agreed to meet. He slipped her under his outer robe so people would assume there was one where there were, in reality, two. He walked down to the fighting pit and sat in a corner, at first determined not to fight and risk the little girl's safety. But he was known there and people would not leave him alone so that, eventually, he gave in, firs setting the little girl in a corner where no-on would see her.

She watched him fight with large, fascinated eyes, watched the blood flow form his opponents. The colour of the blood was so rich, vibrant, disorderly, that she had an extreme desire to reach out and touch it...

When Bruises was taking the little girl home, he was silent, afraid that she, having seen how ferocious he really was, would be afraid of him. But she was no such thing. She began talking, "I wanted to touch it."

"What?"

"The blood. Just to see if it was real."

"Were you scared?"

She gave him a trusting smile. "Nope! I knew you'd be safe."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!" There was a brief silence before she started again. "Bruises...One day will you take me to a place where there's no always-changing maids. Where I can always watch you fight like that? Because I saw you have fun, and I had fun too."

He could have said no.

He should have said no.

Instead he said, "I promise I will."

They arrived home, he made sure she was safe before leaving and was relieved because he had seen no-one notice them.

But he didn't think that someone may have checked on the little girls' bed and, seeing it empty, alerted the Lord.

He didn't know that the Lord would begin to hate his little daughter more and more.

The next day the little girl was summoned to the Lord's office.

He began. "Where did you go last night?'

"Nowhere-"

_Slap_.

"Tell me," commanded the Lord coldly, but the girl's head was ringing so she didn't answer. Taking her silence for rebellious behavior, the Lord hit out again, with a closed fist. As he continued to beat her, she dimly noticed that she was being treated he same way Bruises' opponents had been treated.

And after, Bruises wanted to murder the Lord. He found her in the place they'd agreed to meet and saw her bruises. She smiled wearily and said, "now I'm Bruises too!"

He clenched his fists. "Your father did this?"

She nodded. "Bruises?"

He paused. He was torn before wanting to storm into that place and beat the man in the same way he had beaten his helpless daughter and listening to the child which had somehow captured his heart. The latter eventually won over. "Yes?"

"Will you take me away now?"

It wasn't a question. I was a plea.

"Of course I will," he said without hesitation. And he slipped her into that hidden place inside his outer robe, at his front, and walked out.

To see the police force waiting for him.

"Stay there with your hands up, kidnapper," yelled one. The Lord was behind this, behind them, Bruises knew it. The man had guessed this was the time he took out the little girl...And now he would die in the prison.

And leave the little girl unprotected and alone?

Like hell he would!

With a snarl he stepped towards them, holding the little girl tight.

Two words condemned him, and two words made him remember suddenly that, any harm that came to him would also come to the little girl.

Those two words came from the mouth of the Lord.

"Kill him."

He could have dodged the swords, but that would leave the little girl unprotected, so instead he turned his back on them. The swords ran him through, One by one.

He looked down as he fell to his knees, happy that he had at least kept her alive.

Then he saw the blood leaking from her little chest.

When the swords had run him through, they had stabbed her as well.

Pain.

He was dying.

They both were dying.

The little girl was obviously in incredible pain. But she put a hand to his chest and touched it, saying, "it _is _real," in a voice of wonder.

With that he vowed that, should there be a next life, anything beyond the current one, he would fight. He would fight to defend this girl, fight and fight and fight and FIGHT!

"I'm taking you there," he managed to mutter through lips which sprayed blood.

Vaguely they heard the words, _Lord! Lord, there's someone there...Oh, god, it's your daughter!_

"Where?" she managed, the sparkle slowly leaking out of her eyes.

"To a place...Where we," he coughed, spraying blood all over her, but she didn't seem to mind. Between he strange lights and his dying eyes her hair almost looked pink. "Can always have...Fun."

She smiled. "I would like that."

Then they died.

*****

In the Seireitei, someone awoke. He had no name. But all he knew was a keen desire to fight and to...There was something else...

But the desire to fight overwhelmed him. He stood and found someone to ask, "where am I?"

"You're in the town Zaraki, district Eighty."

He grinned, pushing that other niggling thought, the one which wouldn't really go until much later, down, and said, "know anywhere I can fight someone strong?"

*****

In district Seventy-Nine a little girl woke up. She smiled, stretched, looked at her hair in delight.

"Hey, it's pink..." she stopped, frowned. There was a name she was forgetting. Someone who was supposed to be there but wasn't.

She went to look for him, for some reason feeling a strong desire for blood.

**Author's Note-**

**This is kind of random...I guess I wanted there to be a reason for certain Soul Reapers to act like they do.**

**Reviews are always welcome!**

**Peace and Love,**

**-XOX, Pangie**


	2. Shattered Glass, Shattered Heart

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

**Before I Died**

**Shattered Glass, Shattered Heart**

Once there was a boy. He wasn't the most charming of boys. He was harsh and hard working and didn't get along with many people. But he was a beautiful boy and so not many people outwardly disliked him.

The boy was good at many things. He was a mathematician, a tactician, a scientist, even a fighter. He had an interest in everything and pursued that interest with an irrepressible vivacity which bordered on obsession.

But he never had any friends. He was never playing, instead preferring to study or work, so none of the village boy liked him. And he was too serious and harsh for any of his study mates.

However he did have a lot of admirers. By the time he reached his teenage years he had a steady stream of admirers who saw his beauty and saw his hard-working attitude and decided that they would change him, make him love them, and looked upon him with the amorous eyes of dreamers.

He hated those looks. He hated those people. So each girl he rejected with a firm hand, hoping that eventually they would no longer bother him.

Until one day she came along.

She was the boy's opposite in every way. She smiled where he frowned. His mouth was filled with hardness, hers with softness. He set up a track for his life and followed it and she made her own way, drifting like the petals from a flower on the wind. He was beautiful, she not so much.

And he could see where she was blind.

He met her when she came up to him one day. He had bee unsure about her. Her femininity made him wary, as the only real contact he had with women were with those desirous would-be seductresses. His mother, and father, had died when he was born, his mother because if his birth, his father from his own hand when the love of his life was gone. But her blindness made him feel responsible for her. So he didn't know what to do.

"Relax," she said. "I can find my own way." Using her hands, she found an empty chair and sat. "Would you mind if I kept your company for a little while?"

"No," replied the boy shortly, even though the answer was a 'yes'.

She eased herself into a chair and asked what the boy was reading. He told her and she answered, "ah, yes one of my favourites." When he looked at her disbelievingly, as if feeling his eyes upon her, she replied, "a friend read it to me once." She asked him a few questions about what he liked about the book and that got them speaking. The boy fond, in the girl, what he had found in no-one else. An open mind. A mind intelligent enough to come up with ideas and interpretations and philosophies he would have never dreamed of. He quickly found himself warming to this girl, to this extraordinary blind woman who so delightfully captured his interest.

And eventually his heart.

But the woman, that extraordinary woman, didn't seem to return his affections. She was the same to him like she was with everyone. His heart, clinging to the one warm source of affection it had been able to for as long as the boy lived, refused to acknowledge that the overwhelming love it felt was not returned. Not as much, anyway. Not in the desired way.

Then a female became Emperor.

Before this the Emperor's harem was full of women but now there was a wild scramble for beautiful males to provide the new female Emperor with.

And, eventually, they came for the boy. His skills were, by that time, renown, as was his unusual beauty. The soldiers came bearing arms and requesting that he be taken in.

Of course, the boy refused. For the first time he touched the women, his arm around her, and pulled her towards him. It sent tingles down his arm which spread everywhere, his heart filling with warmth. He never noticed how she stood at his side awkwardly and even shied away a little, like she would be somewhere else.

"I will not go," he denied proudly. "I am going to wed this woman right here."

It never occurred to him that perhaps the woman did not want to wed him.

But the soldiers took no notice of that. They looked at the blind woman and saw an obstacle to the thing they had been ordered to get. And so, some with hearts heavy, they plunged their swords into the woman's breast.

The man fought. But he was one unarmed man and lost.

The blind woman began to die, almost absent mindedly wondering why she was dying. Wondering if she'd been a little more open and assertive, the boy would not have thought she felt what she didn't.

The boy was frantic. He struggled and even cried. The onlookers were shocked. They had never seen the boy shed a tear. "No, don't die!" he cried to his beloved. "Don't die, I love you!"

The blind woman was dying. She wanted to tell him that it was unfair, tell him that she did not love him. Instead she heard the boy cries and her heart broke. Her lips formed two words which the boy read from her lips. "I'm sorry."

"No, no! I love you!" he cried as the soldiers dragged him away.

And so, before anyone else could reach her, all alone and in incredible pain, the blind woman died, wishing that she were more powerful so she could fight, wishing that...

As soon as he was dragged out of the building the boy went limp. He felt as every string which had been holding him intact and upright was snapped as the one who had been holding him up, who had become the source of his very being, died an ignoble, dishonourable death.

They paid him no heed simply taking him to the Emperor's domain the way they had been ordered to.

When they arrived the boy was put into a single room. A woman entered, an old one. Despite her age she stood with a straight spine. The boy ignored her.

"Remove your clothing."

He ignored her.

"Remove your clothing," she repeated in clipped, matter-of-fact tones. "I must inspect you for disease or blemishes."

He ignored her.

"If you do not remove your clothing then I will be forced to call the guards, and they may be rough with you," she told him.

He still ignored her.

She observed him, intelligence in her eye as she ran her gaze over him. "You have the look of someone who has lost something dear to them."

He ignored her still, the pain in his heart making everything else irrelevant.

"I will tell you this once. What ever or who ever it is you have lost, they belonged to the boy. And, like all childish things, must be put aside, forgotten. When you walked through those doors you became a man."

He stopped ignoring her. He looked up. "No."

"No?" she asked.

"I have not yet become a man," he told her. "But I will." And a secret desire he shut up in is heart. He locked it away in a tight place where none could find it, where even he would forget about it.

The woman seemed to sense a change in him. "Will you remove your clothing?"

He did. It humiliated and shamed him but he did it. He felt stained to the core of his being when the old woman walked around him and examined him, commenting on his various aspects. He shut them out, their casual crudeness disgusting him.

"The Emperor will be pleased with you," she said approvingly before leaving. "Get dressed in these."

The new clothes bore the Emperor's seal. And, just like that, he became a consort to the female Emperor.

There were a hundred such consorts. All of them male and al incredibly beautiful. They bathed, dressed and lived together unless it was time for the Emperor, because it was forbidden to call her the Empress, to visit them and...partake in her acquisitions.

Thinking those words brought a sickly taste to the boy's mouth.

Every moment spent in that male harem sickened the boy until it felt like a permanent stain was imprinted on his soul. Not because any of the men were cruel. A few were, but they knew that to fight was to be bruised, and to therefore be less desirable. So there was very little physical violence.

Instead it was the Emperor herself and the contrast between her and...And her. His blind love was sweet, smart, unassuming. The Emperor was cold, harsh, demanding and would take without asking.

And even if that were all then it would not be so terrible a thing.

But they were required to physically and emotionally love the Emperor, and that was what made the boy feel disgusted at both his surroundings and himself. Not that they had any way of checking inside the boy's heart. That he kept locked up deep inside with only the last happy memory of his blind love to accompany it. The way just touching her left tingles down his spine...

As he discovered the first month after he had arrived, the Emperor did not make him tingle. She came to them one dark night. They had been told that, if the Emperor came, they would have to assume positions and poses which displayed them best, as if they were all prize cattle to be sold off.

But they hadn't been sold, they'd been stolen.

The boy had no wish to pose or primp like the others were doing. Yet the old woman which was in charge of the Emperor's consorts, the same old woman who had inspected him as he first came in, was watching them all carefully, and he knew that it would be death to defy his orders in the Emperor's presence. So he leant against the wall, the so-called shirt not leaving anything to the imagination with it's transparent material. He looked away, wishing for the Emperor to simply choose and end this torment of nerves.

He felt eyes on him.

He looked directly into the eyes of the female Emperor.

She beckoned. He had to come.

And after that, he became one of the Emperor's favourite consorts. That which was his first time. He became knowledgeable in things that he wished to know nothing about. He was used again and again and it never felt like anything but ill use. He felt the stain blacken, his soul darken like a bruise.

This continued for years. The boy grew into a man, though he would not acknowledge it, only thinking of himself as a boy. He would remain a boy until his secret wish was fulfilled.

And then, one day, his chance came.

It started with a weed. He over heard the gardener commenting on it. On how it's flower was poison. The gardener left but the boy had seen the weed. It was a unique plant, one which he would recognise easily. And, only a few weeks after, he did. He snagged the flower before anyone saw him and ground it into paste. This paste he put into a little bowl and took with him the next time the Emperor summoned him.

When she was finished with him she did like she always did and asked her consort, in this case the boy, to fetch her the sleeping potion she kept near. So the boy did so and, while out of sight, tipped in the mixture, which he had kept hidden amongst his clothing, and tipped it in, stirring it with his fingers. He came close to the Emperor and gave her the cup. And with hungry eyes he watched her drink. She sent him away with her last breaths of life which she presumed was the prelude to sleep.

As the boy went away he became a man.

His secret wish had been fulfilled.

He had killed the Emperor.

That night, before any alarms could be raised, he fled.

The news spread fast, like fire. The Emperor is dead. No-one seemed to detect any foul play, though, as the Emperor had been fairly aged. It was not uncommon for natural deaths to begin to take those around the Emperor's age. And so the man was free once more.

He felt no desire to start anew but tried, as he believed his beloved blind woman would have wanted him to, but to no avail. All he had learned was gone. They hadn't let him keep even his knowledge. He was to far behind for even the most benevolent of teachers to give him a chance.

This waste of his mental abilities made the man angry. He became harsh once more. But, to stay alive, there was only one thing he could do.

There were many rich women who would be interested in him the same way the Emperor had been. But this time, like a cattle who sells itself, the man would make them pay for his services.

But his harsh heart and anger would not serve this purpose so he dulled their edges with alcohol. He would visit those rich women with all their make up and their revealing gowns and let them darken his soul that little bit more before leaving, then he would drink. He became addicted to alcohol so that living seemed unbearable without it.

Even when he was like this women found him desirable and he always found a steady stream of clients.

Alcohol and sex. That was his world. Those women with too much make up who would demand everything from him and that alcohol which dulled everything, made it just bearable. Drunkenness became his refuge, and that was the time where he needed it more than anything.

For he had discovered something. No, discovered is incorrect...He acknowledged it. Acknowledged the truth which had been steadily growing inside him.

And it was this: that he had caused his love's death all those years ago. True, he had not wielded the swords which robbed her of life, but he had done it all the same. He had held her close and made her a barrier between him and the soldiers, him and the female Emperor. It did not matter that he loved her. All that mattered was that he was responsible for her death. It was his fault. In his dreams he began to see that it had been himself who had wielded those weapons, he who had murdered his beloved out of a wish not to let the soldiers see her and take her life themselves. At first these were nothing but nightmares but, after awhile, he began to believe them. He began to believe that it had actually been him. And he began to cut.

He would slash his arms and legs.

As if he were trying to cut out a rotten core, he would cut.

His current clients disliked this, but the scars attracted others, so he was never moneyless. These new clients looked at him with eyes half-cold and then they cut him too, but now the man endured it, feeling he deserved it.

Of course, he could not go on like that forever.

One day he was coming home from a client with an unopened bottle in his hand and he came across an argument in the street. This was not uncommon, but this one stood out to the man. It was a poor man and his daughter arguing with a debt collector. The father and daughter were apparently too poor to pay their debts and so the tax collector was demanding that the daughter be sent off as a slave in return. But the father loved his daughter too much and would not let her go.

The man had passed a hundred such arguments without the bat of an eyelid but this one struck a chord on the man's heart strings. The daughter was blind.

The man stepped up to the tax collector and gave him the money he had just earned. The tax collector looked at him, gaping, for a moment, before taking the money and leaving, saying that all the father's debts were paid. The father and daughter were extraordinarily thankful to the man and offered to let him stay a day in their house, to share a meal with them, anything to repay him, but the man would take nothing as he saw the poverty the two would still have to deal with. Eventually the blind girl went away for a moment and then came back, pressing something into his palm. "A noble family grows them a while away. They were pruning today and I picked some up."

The man looked at what the blind little girl had pushed into his palm. It was a flower, not one he had seen before. A pink colour, it sent off a sweet smell.

"What is it?" he murmured. The little girl smiled.

"A rose."

With that the man left, holding the rose close to him, it's sweet scent comforting and it's smooth texture soothing. When he got back to his one he began to drink again but more than before. He drank everything he had, for he had finally unlocked the image of his long-dead blind love and could, only then, grieve for her. He finally recognised that she did not love him. He finally recognised that it had been one-way. He vowed that, if he ever fell in love again, if he ever found someone again, he would not blind himself to their feelings. He would try to make them love him.

As he drank long-withheld tears trickled, then flooded, down his cheeks. They marked a new path for the man. For he would no longer live like he had been living. He would live happy. Somehow he would do it. He would take those black marks off his soul. He would live again.

But the hope was outweighed by despair as he looked about himself and saw what he had become. He had become nothing. A dead man in a living man's body.

SO he drank away his troubles. Finding the last bottle in his house empty he threw it against the wall and it shattered, the glass shattering like he thought his heart had all those years before. It provided a kind of release. The shattered glass called to him, a shattered man with a shattered heart, like calling to like. He picked up another empty bottle and threw it, shattering it again.

He steadily broke all the glass in his house. The destruction freed a part of him which had always been locked up tight.

And, when all the bottles were gone, he began cutting once more. As he did he thought of the regrets of his life and, as if to release them, cut deeper, almost as if he were cutting the regrets out.

His hard work during his childhood. Even when he felt like he could do no more he had pushed himself to work, even when he just wanted to play. He regretted it. Where had hard work ever lead him? He would work when ever he felt like it from then on and if that were never, then so be it.

He cut.

Never having told his blind love how beautiful he thought she was. Never having told her that something about her quiet, reserved demeanour, her conservative dress, her bookishness,soothed him and made him relax his guards around her.

He cut.

Allowing himself to become a dead man in a live body. Allowing himself to die inside. Not letting himself look at the beauty of the world, such as the exquisite beauty of that flower, the rose.

He cut.

What felt like a hundred regrets later he finished, setting down the glass. He felt tired and depleted, but in a good way. He felt as if he could now begin his new life. He looked down and only at that moment felt pain. Only at that moment did he feel that maybe he had gone too far. The cuts on his wrist were deep, so deep. And there was so much blood.

He tried to stand but could not. The alcohol and blood loss made the whole world spin and he came crashing down, the broken glass on the ground slicing into him in a thousand tiny cuts. He recognised that he was dying.

"...Help," he cried but it was soft too soft, and besides, who would help him? He was nothing. "But I'm not finished yet," he cried helplessly, the unfairness of it all making him able to speak but not move, not save himself, though he had the suspicion that it was already too late. "But there are too many things I want to do, to many changes I want to make! I don't want to die!" he cried ad the blackness closed in on him.

It was too late and he knew it.

He shut his eyes and died alone and unwanted by anyone except a father and his blind daughter, who never knew of his death, and who, eventually, forgot he who had been their saviour that one time.

*****

Nanao Ise awoke. For a moment she was astonished and a little scared by something. Her sight . For some reason she felt she wasn't able to see. After a while she sat up, worried and concerned. There was something...Something she was forgetting. Something to do with someone who wanted her to do something she didn't want to, who thought she felt something she didn't. She had the incurable desire to set them straight. She was not... She didn't...

She blinked. She could not see clearly. She stood and went to find someone who, maybe, could help her see better. For a moment she felt her way around like a blind person, as if out of habit. Then she began walking like someone who could see.

*****

Shunsui Kyoraku awoke. He felt an immediate pain along his wrists but, when he looked, there was nothing. He forgot the pain but what was left for a little bit longer was a lingering desire for...nothing. He literally just wanted to laze around and do nothing. He looked around himself. A large pink cloak caught his eye. Something about it's bizarre lack of formality and the flowers embroided on it made him smile. He caught a sweet scent and smiled, wondering what it was. Then he knew.

"Roses. They're roses."


	3. Beauty Without Pain

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

**Before I Died**

**Beauty Without Pain**

Once there was a man. The man was friendly, likeable, was always ready to give someone a hand. He was the ideal husband to his wife, never raising neither hand nor voice when it came to her. He was the ideal work partner, never taking a day off unless he needed it, always willing and happy to do his part in his workplace. He was the ideal father to his two children, doting on them and helping them to grow and flourish. But this man held a secret deep within him, for he was a very sick man, not in body, but in mind. His sickness was like the rotten core of some delicious looking fruit, hidden behind a seemingly perfect outside.

This sickness meant he had desires when no desires should have been. He wanted to torment. To do certain things to children he passed in the streets. He wanted to hurt them. To torture them. To shut them up so he could torture them again and again.

This desire grew and grew and grew some more until he found himself thinking such things about children of his own class, of the noble class. The man was very worried that he may...He may even start thinking such things about his own children.

And that could not happen. No innocent child of noble rank should be exposed to the thoughts inside his head which sprung from his sickness like water from an ever-filing well.

He was terrified that one day the well would overflow and he would act on what ever child was near, whether it be on one of the rag-tag commoners, which would be acceptable, or one of his own class, which would certainly not be.

Which meant he had to act on his desires on one who is would be acceptable.

And that was his secret. That, one day, he had gone down to the dwellings of the commoners, and had found a child, a girl child, barely out of babyhood, and had taken her to a secret lodging, and had shut her there for him to toy with. But it was not an evil decision. After all, it was just the bastard brat of some common whore who had been all too happy to take a few coins for her.

So once a day he would come down with food and drink to the place he had shut the child up in. It was a cellar in the bottom of the house. He would come down with a lantern. At firs the child was afraid of him but he coaxed her near. For years that was all he would do. For an hour, or perhaps two, a day he would come with food and light and possibly the rags which were worn as clothes and the small creature would depend on him. This depriving her of the light of the day and freedom, for he held the key which locked the door, brought about a deranged delight in him which kept him satisfied for a while.

There was something so satisfying about limiting the child's world to that one, small room.

But then, when she was about four, his desires began to change, to mature with her. Up until that time he desired nothing more than to watch her fall hungrily over the scraps he brought her, to watch her bathe in the light as if were holy. She did her necessary business in a tray of wood shavings and was happy when he brought it away. Up until that point he would say nothing but simple, one-word commandments. But one day, as he came down and she looked at him with eager, dependant eyes, he desired something more. He wanted to hurt her. He felt it the next day, and the day after that.

So he decided to bring a knife. That day he walked down those dark steps with an increased anticipation, relishing each and every step. The girl looked at him with that skin so pale from the lack of sun and he gave her food.

"You are ugly," he told her in disgust. Saying the words was thrilling. The girl didn't seem to understand. "Eat." She began eating as he changed the wood shaving in that tray. "You are ugly. Can you even speak? How dull you are."

The girl sat with eyes downcast, knowing that she had somehow incurred his displeasure. The sight made him near ecstasy. "But you know how you can be beautiful?" he asked. The change in tone brought the girl's eyes up. "Through pain you can have beauty." He brought out the knife and pulled out the girl's leg. He pressed he knife into the girl's flesh, feeling sweet relief as it pierced. The girl cried out in pain and he looked up, as if in surprise, as if it were not for his own depraved pleasure that he liked to see the confusion and pain and hurt combined on the girl's face.

"What's wrong? Don't you want to be beautiful?"

He cut again. She began to cry.

"Crying? That is a very ugly thing to do."

And so he kept up the torrent of spite and cuts until their time was up, then he wrapped up the girl's wounds, as he did not want her to die on him, and left. He wondered if he should feel guilty as he left, but decided not. After all, she was just a commoner's bastard. It wasn't like he was doing such things to a real child, god forbid.

And so it went like that for a while. The girl learned what the words meant. When she was alone, which was most of the time, she spoke the words aloud. Her tongue did not seem to want to do what she told it and the words came out mangled at first. "Uh...Uh-ee. Oo...Oo... Boo-ee-oo." But, eventually her lips and tongue worked in sync to create the language which she knew and so she learned to repeat her 'master's' lessons to herself. "I am ugly. To be beautiful I must endure pain without ugliness, without tears or frowns." But, despite how hard she tried, she could never do such a thing. So she was deemed to remain hideous all her life.

She knew this because her 'master' told her over and over again. "Are those tears? It looks like you will never be beautiful."

And so she cried, and resigned herself to forever being ugly.

It was largely her ignorance which made her play along with the sick man's sick games like she did. She did not truly know what ugly and beautiful were. She only knew what the man told her. She did not even recall about the outside world.

She had no idea things could get worse.

One day, as she was crying and as her master was slowly stepping on each of her toes and fingers with his boots, a thought crossed his face. She could almost see the tracks it made and the new, thoughtful expression which was revealed by the glorious light of the lamp which the thought left behind.

"Do you know, I think there may be another way," mused her master. "For you to be beautiful."

She had looked up with eyes wide and tear drenched. The girl knew she could never be beautiful the way things were going. "How can I be beautiful?"

"Take this knife."

She took it hopefully.

"And now cut off your fingers and toes."

The girl looked up at hi with wide, terrified eyes. He looked back stonily. The little girl saw nothing but her master, a man who was only trying to help her become beautiful. She didn't see how he was in ectasy watching her terror, watching her trying to decide whether to cut off her own appendages or not. It was a game of mental torture and he was winning, oh, how he was winning.

The little girl sat down and looked at her feet, looking at the toes. She didn't see how the man leaned forward in incredible anticipation to see if this new game would work. She lowered the knife. She decided she would cut off the littlelest first, as that seemed to be the one she would need less, and maybe do the rest next time._ And then I will be beautiful_, she thought as she brought the knife down lower so that the edge was pressing against her toe. It sliced through the skin, the blood wet.

And she could go no further.

"I can't," she choked, tears straining her words.

The man sighed, annoyed. She hung her head in shame and handed him the knife. "Then I will just have to do it," he said, reaching for her feet.

"No!" she cried. What had seemed dreadful when it was her doing it herself seemed to be on a new level of horror when it was her master doing it.

"I am trying to make you beautiful!"

"Pleas don't do it! I'll try to have more pain just please, please don't!" she begged, gasping as the tears rushed down her face. But her master had seized one of her feet. She screamed.

He put the foot down. She felt for her toes, but they were all there.

"Then we will just have to try harder."

From then on the man would bring more than just a knife.

He began to alcohol every day. He would pour it on her scratches. She would try not to scream and a lot of the time she didn't, but the tears escaped as if of their own accord. They made her ugly.

He brought a whip a few times. She tried not to flinch but it was no use. As a part of this process, her master told her that she would have to ask for more of the whip. Sometimes she did.

He brought in a little harmless-looking rough thing which he scraped against her arm until it was bleeding, and then he asked her to scrape at the sore some more.

She hurt all the time but thought _I want to be beautiful_.

But it never worked as she was always ugly.

And she never saw the man's satisfaction. His elation. How he became almost hysterical with joy at her pain, her suffering.

She saw him as a master who was only trying to help her.

He saw her as a thing to be used so he would not hurt real children.

She never knew the truth.

He never wanted to.

Then came the day everything changed.

*****

"Pst."

She thought it was her imagination.

"Pst, over here."

She looked around but the man was not present. She became very, very afraid.

"What are you?" she asked in a voice high with fear.

"Me? I am a boy. What are you?"

The girl did not know how to answer so she replied with the only thing she knew for certain. "I am ugly."

"Well, I haven't seen you so I can't say if I agree with you...But I mean what are you doing there in the dark-"

The metallic clinking which signified her master.

"Someone's coming?" asked the voice.

"Yes," replied the girl.

"Don't mention me."

Her master came down.

She said nothing about the voice she had heard. Things continued between her master and herself like they had always been and, eventually, he left, taking the light and leaving behind the dark.

For a few moments she stayed silent before the voice came again. "Is he gone?"

Fear rose up inside of her like a wave, fear of the unknown. "I don't want to speak with you!"

"Why not?"

"Because...You are different!"

"Do you think so? How would you know?"

The question stumped her. "How...What?"

"How would you know I am different to you? We could be very similar."

"We could be?" she repeated like a parrot.

"Yes. Here, how about I light a lamp and you come over and-"

"No!" she protested violently. "You can not light a lamp!"

"Why not?"

"Because only my master can do that," she replied defiantly.

"...Why?"

"Because...Because..." She couldn't think of a reason.

"It's not that hard to do. Here, I'll show you. Come over to this chink. No, over here." It took her a while to find it in the dark but she followed the boy's voice until she found a little hole in the stones.

"You looking through?"

"Yes," she affirmed.

"Now watch."

He lit the lamp and her whole world exploded. The light illuminated the other room, which was like the one she was in except with odd objects here and there which frightened and thrilled her at the same time. The lamp was almost exactly like her master's, except different in tiny ways which enthralled her. She stepped back, wonder warring with excitement as the darkness of the room was penetrated by the sliver of light which was let through the hole. It set off a deeper emotion than any she had ever felt before, making the shallow delights at seeing her master and the satisfaction of eating seeming like pale mockeries of emotion.

Excitement enveloped her and she laughed aloud. "It's...It's..." she began, trying to find the word, any word, she could use. A word popped out without her thinking. "Beautiful." She felt a familiar dread saying it. A dread that, only when contrasted with the emotion of excitement, was visible, like the walls of her room were always there, but only seen by the light of a lamp. She had never realised she had associated the word with dread before.

She had gone silent. The boy's voice said, "what is it? You were laughing and just cut yourself off...It's that man, isn't it?" he asked angrily. "That man and how he told you that you were ugly and you had to feel pain to be beautiful."

"No, don't say a word against him," protested the girl like a worshipper protesting blasphemous speech of their god.

"But it's a lie. Pain doesn't suddenly make you beautiful."

"Just stop. Stop!"

"He's a liar."

"Stop!" she shrieked, her hands over her ears. The voice stopped. She defiantly told herself that she felt happier. That her master was right and the voice wrong. That she had not been believing a liar all that time. That she had not felt pain for a lie, asked for pain for a lie, almost cut off parts of herself for a lie...

And a little piece of her sighed in disappointment because she thought the voice was gone and gone for good.

But then he spoke again. Slowly and distinctly. Every word measured as if too much or too little would be fatal. "Do you know anyone other than the...your master?"

"No."

"Have you seen any other person?"

"There are others?"

"How long have you been in that place?"

"What do you mean?"

There was a pause. The boy asked a different question. "Have you ever been out of the place you are in?"

"There are no other places," the girl told him. "There can't be."

For a moment there was silence again.

"You...He..." began the voice, anger where anger had not been before.

"What is it?" asked the girl. "What have I done to make you angry?"

"No, it isn't-"

"If I am too ugly-"

"_No_."

She began to cry. "I'm s-sorry," she sobbed. "I d-don't mean to b-be what I am."

"No, it isn't your fault," the voice told her, once again absent of anger. "I'm going to ask you something. Would you be able to not tell the man about me?"

"Why?"

"Because he may...He may not..."

"He may make you stop talking to me?"

"Yes, exactly. And in return, I'm going to do something for you."

"You...I can't-"

"No, I will, and it will be my pleasure. I'm going to tell you things."

"What things?"

"Everything."

And he did. He told her of other people, all different. He told her of other places. Of colours, which he showed her. Of everything. He was a fountain of knowledge in her desert. She began to stop surviving on her master and she began surviving -no, _thriving_ on him.

Ever so slightly and ever so slowly her view on both herself and her master began to change.

Soon they began to try and find ways to break through the wall that separated them. The boy began chipping at the mortar which held the rocks in place. When he had made a hole big enough, he passed the girl a metal knife to do the same. At first she had not wanted to touch the thing, but the boy had told her it was too blunt to cut, only to chip away, and so she had been able to handle it.

Eventually they managed to take loose first one stone, then another. Rock by rock they took down the barrier between them until there was enough of a gap to squeeze through, be it a slow and cumbersome process.

Eventually the boy stood in front of the girl. He wrinkled his nose. "Pooh...When was the last time you had a bath?"

The girl smiled. She had heard of 'baths' through the boy. "Never. And I'm not having one, either."

"If you're going to be a part of my gang you are."

Words so sweet had never been uttered in such bitter circumstances.

"I'm going to be a part of your gang?"

"If you want to."

But before she could answer the sound of a lock unlocking chased them, caught them, seemed to pin them down. They stood, frozen, for a split second only before the boy began, "you're going to have to come with me." He began crawling through the hole, quick as lightning he wriggled through.

"We have to put the stones back-"

"There's no time!"

The door unlocked. The girl began crawling through. She tried to be quick but, before she could climb the whole way through a bellow sounded, as if I were an alarm. A loud, angry command for her to stop. She wriggled through faster. Just as she scooted through she felt the wind of someone's hand pass her feet. She and the boy backed away from the hole in the wall as the man who had been the girl's master for so long looked through.

"You ugly bastard brat!" he screamed as he looked through. His eyes travelled to the boy. "I'll kill you if you take her away!"

The boy smiled but there was a glint in his eye. "I'll kill you if you make her stay."

The man's gaze travelled to the girl. "You! I am your master! You need me to be beautiful!"

"No, you are just a man," she disagreed. "And I don't need to be beautiful."

With that she and the boy left.

The sights and the sounds overwhelmed her as the boy dragged her on. She looked as if she was drugged or stupid as she ran behind the boy, her mouth agape, starving eyes drinking in every sight, starving ears drinking in previously unheard sounds. Her senses were overloaded with new information.

The boy's gang consisted of a few other boys, most younger than the boy, who she discovered was the leader. She was largely welcome as the boy had already explained her situation to the others.

The first thing he made her the next morning was bathe.

The girl quickly discovered that the 'gang' was more an ever-changing rag-tag bunch of needy boys and sometimes girls who would linger in the gang, stealing food and sticking together, drawn by the gang leader's, the girl' rescuer's, good heart and protectiveness towards those around him, before departing for something either better or worse. The only two constants were the boy and the girl. She had, in a way, changed one master for another. She had an incredible loyalty to the boy, a loyalty which a part of her recognised was suspiciously alike the that loyalty she had felt for the man.

The boy was very different from anyone else the girl had met, or did meet. He was kind and protective of those who followed him. This was so different to everyone else on the streets, most of which would have happily sliced someone's throat for a meal and a place to sleep.

The boy and the girl became constant companions. The girl had a hunger for new sights and sounds which the boy found fascinating. One example of this was the first time the girls saw red hair, a few days after she had been rescued.

"What is wrong with that man's hair?"

"Who?" She pointed him out. "Nothing. He just has red hair."

"Oh. Well, I like it. I want hair that colour. It is...Beautiful."

There were times when the boy noticed the girl saying those words the man had used as weapons to torment her where she would hesitate then rush through the word as if plunging through an icy stream. She seemed to be gradually getting used to using the words. 'Ugly' meant flat, boring. 'Beautiful' was anything which intrigued the eye. Eventually this began to change. The hesitation lost. The words lost their special meaning. She used 'beautiful' less and less until it was only used when she was describing something physically appealing. And she almost never used 'ugly'.

The boy was proud.

He tried to teach her to write but the whole thing was an ordeal for her. She just disliked it. The boy accepted this.

But, while this was happening, in the noble part of town the man who had formerly been the girl's master was getting ready. He was going hunting.

He was worried the boy would tell someone. That the and the girl would conspire together to destroy what he thought was his well-deserved good reputation. After all, she wasn't really a child, was she?

So he put together a description and put out rewards. Soon boys who had even the faintest resemblance to the girl's rescuer were being dragged off the streets and brought in front of the man. The boy got more and more troubled by this, as even his own gang had not been immune.

"You know sooner or later," the girl told him. "They're going to find you. And when they do..."

"I know," acknowledged the boy. "I'll just have to strike first then"

With a heavy heart the boy set out that night.

He snuck into the man's house. First he found where the man slept. His weapon of choice was a farmer's tool, a scythe, which he had stolen that day for that purpose. He looked down at the sleeping form of the man and felt ill. He could not do it. It was a sleeping man, a helpless man. His arms became too weak even to life the scythe. He couldn't do it.

Then he remembered the voice.

_You are ugly._

_Pain will make you beautiful._

That playing of the girl like a sick game.

Having to listen to it while he hid from another gang, one passing through. The waiting for them to pass so he would have to fight them made worse by the manipulation of a child.

Anger gave him strength. He lifted it. He swung down. The man awoke, his neck severed almost completely. He tried to breathe, his eyes bulging almost out of his head with horror.

His wife screamed.

Apparently the swing and thud of the scythe had awoken her.

"You monster," she shrieked.

"Be quiet," he begged. "Please, I don't want to hurt you-"

"Monster! I will have you hung! Guards! Guards!"

He could do nothing else but kill her too. But her shrieks had awoken the children. Just as he swung the scythe at the woman, her terror making him almost wish he were killing himself in her stead, they appeared at the door. There were three of them. One a toddler. One a child. One almost his age. The two elder were girls, the younger was probably a boy. They began screaming and running. The eldest girl ran at him, screaming hysterical nonsense about killing him. He turned to face her, putting his hands in front of him like a shield.

Forgetting the scythe.

It cut into her head.

She looked straight at him and opened her mouth wider, as if she wanted to scream.

While looking into his eyes.

While staring directly onto his soul.

She died.

The next child ran up to her. The toddler was crying, why was the toddler crying? Blood.

Bloodstains.

Blood everywhere.

On that fancy carpet it probably couldn't' come off. The carpet was ruined.

Pity, that.

The crying. That toddler won't sop crying.

Someone stop the toddler crying.

His mind ran in circles like, if it stopped for even a moment, it would stop entirely, because he had killed.

The toddler was crying.

He stepped forward.

The little girl was screaming. Why didn't she stop and stop the toddler crying?

He took another step.

He swung.

The toddler stopped crying.

He wondered who had stopped the toddler crying.

Who ever had stopped it, he was grateful.

He wondered why there was more blood, so much blood.

Bloodstains.

But at least the toddler stopped crying.

The little girl hadn't.

Her screams had gone up a pitch and she was huddling in the corner. Why was she in the corner?

Why was there so much blood?

Why had the toddler stopped crying?

He had the feeling that the answers to those questions were one and the same, but it was horrifying an answer that his mind shied away from it.

Why was the girl in the corner?

Shouldn't she be with her family?

Then the girl stopped too.

And he was standing over her.

And there was more blood than ever.

But at least they had stopped crying.

And shouldn't they be with their family?

Surely that was what was important?

To be with their family.

In the bloodstained room.

Where they were dead.

All five, dead.

Oh, god, what had he done!

His mind seemed to collapse in on itself. The misery was everywhere. The misery was blood. The misery was inside him. The guilt, misery, pain -oh, the pain- was in the blood inside him and he had to get it out.

Luckily he had the means to do it.

A minute later there were six dead bodies where previously there had been five.

*****

The girl was alone again. She did not survive alone well and she knew it. Without the boy the gang fell apart. It simply no longer existed. Now she was alone again. In truth, she was alone for the first time, for at least, before, she had had some kind of hope with the man. She had not been truly alone then. But now?

Now she was alone.

In between masters, for that was what her rescuer had been. Her saviour who she willingly devoted herself. A master who she made herself in servitude to.

The girl wandered around, lost in every sense of the word. Lost in place. Lost in mind. She did what she had become accustomed to doing and stole something, something she had seen miserable adults drink to make them feel better. Maybe it would make her feel better.

She didn't like it at first but grew used to the sharp taste. It made her head pleasantly fuzzy, as if full off cloth. A lot of people shot her disgusted looks but she ignored them. A lot leered at her in the same way they leered at the ladies with low-cut dresses and lot of face paint, but she ignored them too.

Why should she do anything other than that? She was free, wasn't she? From then on she was gong to do whatever the heck she wanted to. She recognised, even in her drunken state (she had, by now, stolen another kind of drink. This one was stronger than the previous) that she would always be dependant on someone who she would see as a kind of master. She would try to break free of this, but it was deeply ingrained into her nature to be reliant on someone. Well, she would try not to be so reliant. She would be independent. She would do what ever she wanted. Drink as much of what ever she was drinking as she wanted. Do none of that writing stuff. She would try not to have a master but, if she did have one, and she knew she probably would, considering how lost she then felt, she would just pretend she didn't.

That made her giggle. Around then, everything mad her giggle. Soon she was laughing uproariously at everything. She whirled around but kept bumping into people. People, that was another thing. She had never really known people. From then on she would do all she could to know people and be friends with them. She didn't want to be reserved. She wanted people. But not those people who she kept bumping into and kept snarling at her. She stumbled where there were no people, and where she could do what ever she wanted. There were a lot of people shouting at her to make her move but she ignored them. They weren't her master-

She didn't see the horse and carriage until it ran into her, the horse rearing. She tripped. The hoof crushed her head. She felt an immense but, thankfully brief pain.

Then she felt nothing.

*****

Shushei Hisagi awoke. He screamed. Then he stopped and couldn't remember why he had screamed. All he could remember was a feeling of remorse. Deep, deep remorse which scarred him like a sharp blade.

A blade.

He shuddered.

For some reason the thought of using a blade was horrifying. Life was something precious to be valued and protected. Not to be cut brutally short.

Never to be cut short.

That he knew.

*****

Rangiku Matsumoto awoke. She blinked. She felt direction-less until she heard some voices. She eagerly followed them and found some old women.

"Oh, what a beautiful child," one sighed.

Rangiku tilted her head. "Am I beautiful."

"Definitely."

She found that she didn't seem to care as much as they did.

*****

Years later she was hunting a hollow in the human world. Her uniform for the tenth division was crisp and new and she felt proud wearing it. The hollow was one which had horrified a lot of Soul Reapers. It was one who hesitated, lingered over it's kills, delighted over the pain. It's victims were children.

It was one of the worst fights she had ever or did ever fight. Not for level of difficulty but because of some unknown hurdle within herself which kept turning her Zanpakto away at the very last moment. Something inside her, deep, deep inside which made her shake. Which made her feel like this hollow was going to hurt her and she would relish it.

"You seem familiar," the hollow cackled. "May I cut you and see if I recognise your screams of pain?"

But she stabbed him with her Zanpakto and, when she did, that something which had held her back was freed. She felt curiously light. She watched the gates to the underworld drag the creature away and felt nothing for him.

From then on she didn't feel the need to obey something, to take someone as her master, which had always been a hidden need for her. She was free.

*****

"Hello," smiled the woman in front of Hisagi. She had pale eyes, as if she had spent a lifetime looking a the dark, but long red hair. She was beautiful. "I came to congratulate you on your promotion to Lieutenant."

"Oh. Thank you," he smiled. "Hopefully I can live up to it."

"Of course you will," grinned the woman before turning away. She had come to him as a friendly courtesy, nothing more.

"Wait...May I know your name?"

"Rangiku Matsumoto."

"I'm Shushei Hisagi."

"I know." She looked away for a moment, distracted by someone calling her name. "My Captain calls. Nice meeting you!"

"You too."

She left. Hisagi let her go, feeling, for some unknown reason, a flicker of pride at her confident pride and easy demeanour. It struck him as very beautiful as it had been a free and easy stride, no sign of discomfort or pain. He frowned, wondering where it had come from.

He then shrugged and never thought on it again.


	4. A Courageous Heart

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of it's associated fictional characters or locations.

**Before I Died**

**A Courageous Heart**

Once there was a child. The child was brave and strong with a true heart which was somehow both innocent and knowledgeable. The child did not consider himself a child. On the contrary, he thought that childhood ended when one learned to walk and talk, and as he had long ago learned those things he considered himself as mature as those who were his seniors by decades.

In all honesty he probably was more mature as they. His heart, though being pure, was not light. It was a serious one, weighed down by thoughts and considerations. The child was one of those who thought only about others.

The village nearby thought the child was homeless as he would only live in the village half of the time, and never at night. He would set out for the forest before night fell. They all presumed he had a home alone in the trees or perhaps in an abandoned shack. But no-one really cared enough to investigate.

They had almost gotten it right.

Because the child did live in the forest. But he was never alone.

The child lived with his family. The child never thought in terms of 'human' or 'animal' so he never actually realised that his adoptive family was something different. He never realised that the way his family walked on four legs instead of two, the way they had elongated noses, the way they were covered in thick hair, were features which set his family entirely apart from the people in the village, except maybe on a subconscious level.

The child's family adopted him when they came across him crying in the woods as a babe. They cared for him as they would one of their own and so the child learned how to live as one and talk as one of those who had become the boy's family. The boy's adoptive mother saw this and also recognised that the boy was different, and needed to learn how to speak in the curious speech of the humans. So she brought him to the village, to an old woman. The old woman and the boy's animal mother had a long history together. They acknowledged each other as equals and sometimes even friends. The old woman owed the other from a favour long ago, so the old woman decided to take on the duty of teaching the boy how to be human.

She taught him the art of speaking first, as that was what she deemed to be the most important. His mouth was not used to forming the intricacies of structured spoken language and he had lost some of the elasticity of mind which enables the very young to learn very fast, but he learned it. It was slow and, at times, frustrating but eventually, as the old woman told him, "you can speak now. Well enough, anyway. You will need to practise more but you are understandable and that is what matters. Now in the way you walk."

She then taught him not to walk on all fours, as he had learned from his adoptive family, but on two legs, upright. This was perhaps more difficult than speaking, and certainly more irritating, but eventually the child learned that as well, though his gait always carried an element of wildness which caused others to automatically be warier of him.

But, by this time the woman was old and near death. One somewhat cool summer day she sent the boy away in the evening, as she did every evening, to go back home to his family, with words which stayed with the boy for the rest of his life.

She had folded her arms, shivering slightly. "It is a very cold summer this year. Odd, that. Cold when it's supposed to be hot. A little like you."

He had looked up in confusion.

"A contradiction, just like you. Raised by animals, yet you are considerate and humane. Wild, yet you have a gentleness about you which doesn't allow you to do harm." She had looked away. "Try to keep that aspect. The habit of contradiction. It's easy to go too far with being too brave, or being too wild, but if you have the other part of you which outweighs it, then it's much harder to take it too far. Still possible, but harder."

He hadn't understood what she meant and had told her so.

"You'll understand when you're older. I jut wish I could be there when you do. I have the feeling you'll be a good person one day. You'd better get home now."

He never saw her again. She died that night, old age stealing her away in her slumber like a gentle hand leading away the blind.

For years he would no longer go into human society. He had never seen the need for it in the first place and now the woman nor his mother was there to urge him into it, the old woman because of her death, his adoptive mother because she had birthed a litter of cubs, the first since he had taken in the child, and devoted all her time to them. He would help her take care of them and she was too grateful for the assistance to request him to go into the village and play with others of his kind.

Years passed and the cubs began to be uninterested in the child, as they did not need him to take care of them and did not want to play with him. Some even left, deciding to live in places far away from their mother. The child visited them a few times but found it disconcerting how those he had previously regarded as siblings would either ignore him or try to fight him. Eventually his mother told him it was time for him to resume human company.

And so his human life began. He would spend half his time in the human world. Normally he simply watched people, but sometimes someone would talk to him. And the rest of his time he would pass in the world of his adoptive mother, running and hunting and being more beast than man.

The child would sometimes catch his mother looking at him cautiously, as if he were an unstable element which she had to keep an eye on. He asked her about this questioning gaze and she simply told him, "it is not yet time. I will tell you later."

This annoyed him, but he kept his feelings to himself.

One day when he returned home from the human village his mother greeted him with news. "I am with cubs."

"Again?" he asked cheekily.

She swatted him. "Yes, again. I have the feeling these will be my last."

Her words had the ring that the old woman's last had and this disturbed the child. His adoptive mother's sides widened slowly. Almost unnoticably. When her birthing day came it was a day which would turn out to be so much more than that which the boy thought.

It was more difficult than the last time. That the boy recognised. He was not allowed to be present for the birthing but he could hear it from outside the small cave. His mother screamed. Several times he got to his feet only to reluctantly sit down again when his mother yelled for him to stay outside.

Eventually she weakly called for him. He entered and a horrifying sight beheld him. Three dead cubs sat in a pool of blood. His mother weakly licked at something smaller than the others, but which occasionally moved. It was the only living cub out of the litter.

"My son," she said and at first the child thought she was talking to the new cub, but then she looked at him. "My son, take care of this one."

"Why will you not be able to?" asked the boy with a heavy weight on his heart which told him the answer.

"Because I am dying."

The boy thought about breaking. He felt like a thin stick which trembled with the weight of death. If he broke he would scream. He would rage. He would fight. But there was nothing to fight. There was only himself, his dying mother and his new brother to break. And screaming would do no good. So he stayed whole, and in deciding to stay whole gained a new strength which he had not previously thought himself capable of.

He gained resilience.

"Then I will have to take care of him," he nodded.

His mother smiled in that animal way which was not nearly so obvious as a human's smile, but all the more precious because of it. "yes son...I have been meaning to tell you something since I first found you.

"I have been meaning to tell you how your mother died."

For a moment the child was confused, then, like a cupboard had been opened in his mind, he thought of things which he had never thought of before. He had always known that his mother was not his birth mother, but he had never gone the extra step in thinking of his birth mother. His human birth mother.

"She died giving birth to you."

It was a crushing blow. He was a murderer.

"Before you begin to blame yourself, look at this cub. Would you blame him for my death?"

He shook is head in an automatic negative. "No." It was true. The thought had not crossed his mind.

"Then do not blame yourself for the death of your mother. Instead, search for your father."

Males had never really been a part of the child's life. Fox males would mate with his mother without him seeing them or knowing of the union. There were the male fox children, but those were more children than male, and when the slow progression from child to male was complete the child would not see them again. Indeed, the last member of his family, apart from his mother, had left in the month before his mother's final birthing. And that had been a female. He had next to no contact with the men of the village. He had next to no contact with any sort of adult males. So the thought of a father was alien and unusual. So much so that it was inconceivable of him to imagine a father figure.

"Do you remember the old woman who tutored you?"

He nodded.

"She was the mother of your father."

The child reeled. The mother of his father? So many questions suddenly sprang up, so many answers he would never receive. But his mother's strength was failing her and he was silent.

"She spoke sometimes to you of her son, who lives alone, in a small house far from the village, did she not?"

He nodded.

"That is your father. Whether you find him or not is your decision. My strength is failing fast, my son. Please, take the cub."

He did so, gently moving the small cub, as if it were the most breakable object in the world. It made a little, high pitched noise.

"He is hungry," explained the fox mother, lying back in the place her newest child had previously been in. "Feed him on the milk of other animals until he can feed himself."

"I will do so."

Her last matriarchal duty fulfilled, the child's adoptive mother shut her eyes so the human boy whom she had come to consider her own would not see the life drain from the globes which had, for all of his life, looked upon him so fondly. "I...Wanted to say one last thing." Her effort in speaking her instructions had drained her life.

He moved closer so she would only have to whisper.

Her whiskers brushed his ear as she whispered, "you are human. I am not. But we have, first and foremost, always always been mother and son and I love you."

Her words said, she lay still.

The boy whispered back, "I love you too, mother."

She said nothing.

"Mother?"

But, without hearing the boy's last words of love, she had died.

From then on, to distract himself from the sudden yawning pit of emptiness that was in the place his mother had been both inside and outside his heart, the child devoted himself to the cub. He found cow's milk when he could find no other, but most of the time was able to coax a little from a pregnant female, or one who's child had been born still and dead. The cub grew until it was a sleek animal with a coat which was thick, glossy and the colour of a flame. He and the cub hunted together, as one. Hey became the contradiction the old woman, the child's grandmother, had spoken of, but housed in two bodies where previously it had been kept in one. The boy was strength. The animal speed. The boy was confused. The animal clear-minded. The boy was compassionate. The animal cold-hearted. They grew together not as man and animal, not as brothers, but as one entity in two bodies.

The boy-animal knew there was something they had to do. Some quest spoken of by the mother of them both. But there was always some new quest to distract them. Or some new game to play. Or some new prey to hunt. The quest was pushed further and further into the back of the boy-animal's mind until it was locked away.

But things don't like to be locked up in the mind. Thoughts are like flowers. The like the light of being thought, and in the back of the mind, being pushed away, puts them into darkness. When there thoughts mutate. The grow from flowers to weeds and spread, a cancerous growth in the back of the mind.

So it was with the boy-animal. The roots of the thought were in everything. Every time they saw an animal with their parents the roots pulled and infected that thing so that soon everything could be linked back to fathers.

It was the animal who finally decided. The animal looked up at the sky by one day, one rainy day when they were huddled together under a tree. The large, luminous golden orbs which were so different from his own sturdy brown ones looked at the boy and recognised both itself and another. The animal said, "this can not go on. We must find the father."

The boy nodded, seeing the sense of this. But he could not agree. Some terrified part of him stubbornly refused.

But the animal was not finished. "You must be courageous. I sense your fear over this. I sense you are scared. But you must confront this. You can not keep living until you confront this."

And the child knew him to be correct.

So they began their journey. The woman who was the mother of his father had told him that the place her son dwelled in was a place high in the mountains where the village was set in, a place where no trees grew. It was a secluded cave surrounded by rocks which made up a dangerous decline down the hill, which was almost a cliff on that side. To get there the boy-animal had to walk one foot at a time, up a slim path which shrank and widened at random intervals. The journey was both perilous and wearying, the path crumbling several times and one or both jumping out of the way of certain death just in time. But the boy-animal was driven upwards and onwards by the thought of what lay at the end of their path.

What would be said to this father, the figure whom neither boy nor animal had never seen or heard? Would the man show happiness at seeing his long-lost son? Would he show regret at leaving?

Or would he hate the boy and the fox? Drive them away? Not want them near?

This thought preoccupied the boy's mind. But the animal's words drove him on. "Be courageous." With every step a danger, he had to be, or else he would have long ago turned back.

The animal did not fare well in the mountain air. It's nose was constantly dried cracked with the cold wind. The boy was troubled by this. The animal's eyes constantly wept. His own did as well, but not in the same way as the animal's did. But the animal told him to stop worrying and keep going and so he did.

Eventually, with great feelings of relief in both creatures, they reached the cave. The sight of it's mouth was both a mercy and a trial, it meaning that they would no longer have to travel but that it was time that they faced something neither had really desired.

Despite his exhaustion the boy hesitated. The animal looked back at him and said with his eyes what he was too exhausted to say with his mouth.

_Be courageous._

The boy swallowed, nodded, and stepped forward until he was inside the cave, ready to face what he was sure would be the greatest trial he would ever face.

And inside was the long-dead skeleton of his father.

The disappointment and acute relief were inseparable. They were one and the same, even if their very contrary nature felt as if were tearing him apart. The animal gently snuffed against his hand, pained as much as the boy. As if numb the boy walked up to the skeleton. It was yellow-white and obviously had been there for a while. Something was inside the skeleton's hand. The boy automatically reached out for it and released it easily.

It was a sketch of a woman. In her face the boy saw some of his own features. He turned it over after a long minute examining the picture. On the back were written two words.

_My beloved._

_Be courageous_, the memory of the animal's words whispered in his mind.

_My beloved._

_Be courageous._

There was a time for courage.

There was a time for tears.

This was the latter.

Afterwards it was as if a great release had been sprung. Both animal and boy cried over their dead mothers and father. Over the rejection of their other siblings, especially when compared to the furry balls of joy and love they'd previously been. Over life and how it changed things. How the past could not be rewritten. How life could not be rekindled. How it seemed that they were contrary in a straight forward but oh-so-complicated world.

And when it was finished they made a decision together.

"We will live now," said the animal.

"With courage and mercy and everything else," agreed the boy.

"Together," they said the one as one.

They spent a night in the cave together, eating the remnants of the food they had brought. The next morning they set out.

During the night there had been serious rains. The water was like a constant force, gentle but unyielding. Over years it had weathered at the stone, weakening it.

So it was really no surprise to anyone but the two involved when, under the boy-animal's feet, their first step sent them falling down the rocky slope.

First came the bruises.

Then bones broke.

Then they stopped and more debris rained on top of them, half-burying them both. They were so entangled at this point that it was unsure where animal ended and boy began in not only the mental and emotional state as it had been before but physically as well.

More rocks were raining down and the boy-animal knew that it marked their end.

There was only enough room for the boy to shift his arm so it provided that little bit more, a meagre amount more, protection of the fox.

There was only enough life in them both for the fox to huff softly against the boy.

That was all.

*****

It was a difficult situation.

Two entwined souls.

Together in life.

Together in death.

But only one awoke.

*****

Sajin Kommamura awoke. He felt different. Stronger, that was the first thing he noticed. But he also felt more natural. He opened his eyes, his eyes which weren't a luminous gold but which weren't a sturdy brown either. He could see something which was furry and twitched when he inhaled, something which hadn't been there before...

Before?

Before what?

There was something...A sense of someone being missing. But then a feeling of peace rushed through him and he knew nothing was gone. Everything he needed was locked in his heart.

His courageous heart.


	5. Warm Fires, Cooling Ice

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

**Before I Died**

**Warm Fires, Cooling Ice**

Once there was a servant boy and a noble girl. The girl was the elder by almost a decade, born in a time of wealth and prosperity for her family.

The boy had come to the family while they were still powerful and wealthy. He came as a child while the girl was still in the years between child and adulthood. He had come begging for a job, any job, as he was desperately poor. At first the head servant was going to turn the by away, seeing him as nothing more than a pathetic beggar and a waste of his time, but the girl saw in the boy something else.

She saw eyes a different colour from her own, one which intrigued her. She saw in his stiff back both pride and humiliation, humiliation at having to beg for a job but a pride which made the girl certain he would not lower himself enough to actually beg on the streets which meant that if he did not get a job he would surely starve. She saw his eyes flicker around the the room and then not leave the eyes of the head servant, making the girl think that maybe he didn't need to look around again. Maybe he had seen and deduced enough to make his own judgement. And his upfront nature, perhaps that was what made him look the head servant directly in the eye. The way he held himself was that of a weary old man, proud even through his age, but with something so incredibly sad in his demeanour, like he had seen things, such sad, sad things, to make it look like he were ten times as old as he seemed to be...

For a moment her upbringing stopped the words which rose to her lips. Like a weak harness which only causes a moment's hesitation the thought flitted across her mind that this was just a boy, a common boy, who could not possibly have such hidden depths as she thought he did. But she knew what she saw and had always had a talent for seeing and experiencing such things as others did not. The words which had been momentarily halted came immediately when she saw the head servant about to send him away.

"Wait," she cried. Her parents were out and she knew that the head servant would at least listen to her, even if he wouldn't actively obey her. "Surely there is some place for him?"

The head servant looked at her in surprise. "What would you have in mind?" He was not a heartless man, only wearied and made wary by years of servitude in families less generous than the one he was currently employed in. If the girl wanted the boy then he would feel a relief over not having to send him out, even if he were just a beggar. "You had something in mind?"

"Yes..." She began, thinking fast. She actually did not have one, but surely could make something up, surely there was some post the boy could..._Wait_! She turned to the boy. "Can you read or write?"

The boy looked at her with those clear eyes. "I can," he said defiantly. The head servant made a little sound of disbelief. Servants rarely learned such things.

"And how many languages can you speak?"

"Three," replied the boy confidently, seeming to realise what the girl was doing.

She turned to the head servant. "This boy will be my replacement teacher until my parents can find another."

"But...He is-"

"My new teacher."

And that was that. The girl took the boy under her wing. She immediately made sure he had clothing, those were easily obtained from an old closet of clothing she had found, that he was clean (this proved to, at first, be something of an obstacle, as the boy refused the water. But she half-bribed half-forced him into the water and it all worked out) and had somewhere to sleep. The next day their lessons began.

He quickly proved himself to be an efficient speaker of three languages, but that included the one they spoke.

He also quickly proved hat he could read and write, but he could only write in childish block letters and read the same.

"Hm...You and I both need to work at this, it seems," the girl told him cheerfully. As she had never had any real expectation of him being better than she at the languages and literary practises she wasn't really disappointed. In fact, she was impressed. The boy was extremely young to have basic knowledge of reading and writing and the ability to speak more than one language.

"I can do all I said I could," he told her defensively, thinking her disappointed.

She laughed. "Oh, it's all right. You said what you needed to," she smiled. He looked at her, startled for a moment, as if confronted with something unexpected. "What is it?"

He looked away abruptly. "nothing."

She opened her mouth to prod him some more but a knock came at the door. A maid opened it, carrying a tray. "I brought the food you requested," said the maid.

"Thank you," the girl said and the maid left the tray and left. The boy looked at what was in the tray mistrustfully.

"You're going to eat that?" he asked distastefully

"No. _We_ are going to eat this. Try some."

"I don't think-"

"Come on," she urged smilingly. "It's good." She showed him how to eat it and, reluctantly, he tried it. He was surprised how much he liked it.

"What is this?" he asked.

"It's a foreign thing called 'watermelon'."

"It's okay," he admitted grudgingly. The girl smiled.

That night the girl was confronted by her parents. "We heard you hired a beggar boy as a teacher yesterday," began her mother with a stiff lip.

"Yes, but it's only until we find a replacement teacher-" the girl began, thinking that she would find a way to keep the boy on even after the teacher had been found.

"I'm afraid that isn't going to happen," her father said.

The girl looked at them, a sinking feeling in her stomach. "Why not? What harm is there-"

"You will get rid of him him tonight."

"No!" she exclaimed. "I can't do that! Why are you telling me to do this?"

Her parents shared a glance and her mother broke out in tears. The girl was surprised. Her mother was a sweet, kind-hearted woman who had given her nature to her daughter and now to see her like this...Something awful must have happened. Something much worse than her hiring a beggar as a teacher. Her parents then proceeded to tell her what was happening.

Their wealth had been dwindling for some time. Almost since the girl had been born their had been signs that not everything was as bountiful and sturdy as they thought it was but, not wanting to acknowledge it and face the prospect of a reduced wealth, they had ignored the signs and simply hoped things would get better.

Unfortunately they never did.

The girl's previous teacher had left because his contract had expired and they could not renew it, not because he had a dying relative, as they had told the girl.

Suddenly the girl realised something. She had not had new clothes in ages. The food had been plainer as of late.

It struck her suddenly.

They were no longer wealthy.

For a moment she stood frozen, looking at her parents with wide eyes. Then she sighed. "We will just have to start getting it back then, will we not?" asked the girl.

Her parents exchanged another glance.

"Will we not?' asked the girl again but with a touch of anxiety.

"No, we will not," replied her father, weighing each word as if it cost him money, not looking his daughter in the eye. "Or rather we will...but you won't."

"My daughter, I am sorry, but we have to," gasped her mother, tears flowing from her eyes like two distant rivers from a mountain capped with melting snow.

"Have to what?" asked the girl, trepidation colouring her voice.

"If we are to survive then we must send you away."

The world stopped.

"Away?" breathed the girl, her mind detached so it felt like another was controlling her body.

"To your Aunt and uncle."

"But...I have never met them," the girl continued in that detached, distant frame of mind. The space between her mind and her body felt as if it were increasing. Nothing felt real and she couldn't quite seem to breathe.

"They are your only hope," her mother gasped, sobbing now. "If you stay here you will risk a diminished status in society and we could not have that."

"No, this is the best thing we can do," her father told her, blinking as he quite firmly did not look at her. "I'm sorry." Those were no empty words. "Just let us try to reclaim our lost wealth."

"My daughter..."

"_I'm sorry but..."_

"**You Aunt and Uncle..."**

"Life will be..."

"_And then you.."_

"**But..."**

The words blurred together as if they were smears of paint on water, creating one big multicolour mess.

And she still could not breathe.

When she fainted, no-one reached her in time to catch her.

*****

When she woke up from her faint her maid was above her, sponging her forehead anxiously. Dimly the girl finally noticed that she had not seen any other maid but that one for a long time. She must be their last one. The maid's face showed relief when the girl opened her eyes.

"Oh, thank the lord," sighed the woman. "I will go tell your mother and father you are awake. They are so worried."

She left, leaving the girl alone.

Or so she thought.

She shut her eyes and when she opened them again another face looked down on hers with anxious eyes which quickly became sceptical when they saw she was still awake.

"Took you long enough to wake up," scoffed the voice connected to the eyes, those eyes which seemed so different. "Thought I'd just have to follow you until you woke up."

She blinked again, slowly, moving her mouth slightly, as if making sure she still could. "Haven't you heard?"

"What, that you're family's poor now? Yeah. The maid told me."

"So following me will not result in any profit," she told him. "I can not pay you. I apologise for any inconvenience-"

"You can't do that!" exclaimed the boy and, for a moment, she saw anxiety and fear combined in his eyes. He blinked and they were gone. "You can't just...Send me away. You said it yourself, we both have got to practise reading and writing and stuff."

"Well, yes but...I am going away-"

"I know." The boy sighed theatrically, brushing back his hair in a show of resignation. "So I'll just have to follow you."

"You will?" mumbled the girl in reply.

"Yeah. That is...If you don't...I mean, if you don't think we have anything more to learn from each other," the boy stuttered, backtracking a little.

"...You will?' asked the girl again, still a little taken-aback.

"I mean...Yeah. Yeah, if you...Yeah." He stared at her, wondering why she was looking at him as if he had just given her a large prize.

"You will!" she cried joyfully this time, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. For a moment he was frozen in shock. Then he went the colour of beetroot and, for a moment, seemed to be wondering what he should then do.

He decided to protest.

"Gah!" he cried, even if it was a little too late for any real surprise. "What are you- you can't just grab people!"

She let him go hurriedly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's fine," he quickly forgave her. She looked at him. He had his arms folded and was looking away but she could have sworn his cheeks were pinker than normal. She smiled slightly but hid it.

Over the next few weeks they prepared for the journey. The Aunt and Uncle the girl was being sent to lived in a cold place high on the mountain ranges. They would have to take a single horse there. At first the parents of the girl was suspicious over the young boy who was to accompany her. If he had been any older they would have refused. But he was too young to be a threat to her and had told them that he was accompanying the girl because he owed her some great debt, what kind he would not explain. The girl knew nothing of this explanation and only the head servant knew both sides of the story. But he saw something between the two, a friendship which had sprung up spontaneously and bound them together stronger than perhaps even life did, and said nothing.

The preparation was over in those few weeks and the girl ready to go. She was gathering together her things while her parents and the boy waited outside. The boy had been thinking something over for a while and took his last chance to ask the question which kept bothering him.

"If I can ask," he began, aiming for politeness. "Why do you let her go on this trip without even an escort."

The father was at first not going to answer. But he decided that, if the boy did not know, it was better he prepared him for what he may eventually see than have him leave his daughter at a time of need. "Partly because there is no way we can afford one. Partly because, having her covered with that cloak she will wear, there is no way anyone will be able to mark her as female unless they get close. But mostly because she doesn't need one."

"Why not?" asked the boy, confused.

"Because..." he traded a glance with his wife. They had reached the stage of life when all that was needed to communicate with each other was a glance. "Because she can defend herself if need be."

"...Huh?"

"When she was a baby, strange things would happen when our daughter was upset," her mother explained. "Toys flying to her. Doors opening and closing. It happens when she is upset."

"You mean..." began the boy is a hushed voice. "She is...magic?"

Both parents immediately hushed him. "Do not say the word! But yes, she is." Having spoken, the father watched him closely for any reaction which would announce to them that he had changed his mind about going with their daughter.

They saw amazement cross his face. A slight fear. Then a thoughtful look. Finally, acceptance flickered across his face and they knew he would stay.

The girl finally came out, taking to bag of necessary objects. "Is the horse saddled?" she called.

"Yes, it is," answered her father in the negative before resting a hand on her shoulder as she reached them. "My daughter...Be safe."

"Write as often as you can," begged her mother with tears in her eyes yet again.

"I will," she answered both question. She and the boy mounted the ride and they were off. The boy had only had riding lessons in the past week and was still disquieted by the feeling of the rapid movement of the horse under him.

"Relax," said the girl, who was behind him. "I can catch you if you fall."

"If I fall?" muttered the boy. "This crazy beast will see us both fall."

She just laughed, knowing the horse was tamer than any other in their shed.

The journey was longer than any trip the girl had been on before, but the boy was knowledgeable in the field of travel and said when they should rest and when they should go. The journey was set to last a week. They had just enough money to rent a cheap room every night.

Approximately half way through the journey they were in such a room. Often the rooms only had one bed. The girl had offered to share but the boy, blushing again, had refused. He insisted that she take the bed, as they alternated between who would sleep on the floor and who would sleep on the bed and he had taken it the previous night. It was particularly cold that night so she had offered to share but, having refused the boy now found himself regretting it, as he could find sleep on the cool floor.

So he was awake when the door creaked open.

Alert in an instant, he stared, frozen and in the shadows, as a man appeared. He was another renter, thickset and heavy. He eyed the sleeping girl with hungry eyes and the boy got angry. But he was small and weak. What could he do?

The man stepped towards the girl, his eyes darting around the room but missing the boy. He shut the door behind him.

He stepped closer to the sleeping girl, taking out little knife.

The boy did the only thing he could think of.

He took in a deep breath. The sound of the intake caused the man to whirl around. "_Wake up_," screamed the boy. The man let out a bellow and began striding towards him. The girl shot awake instantly, panicking as she sat up. The sounds of doors opening and footsteps coming towards them seemed to reach their ears in slow motion. The man had almost reached the boy. The girl saw the knife clutched in his hand. The man seized the boy. Their door opened, alarmed faces peering in. The man rose the knife. The girl screamed, shutting her eyes.

She didn't see the way the knife turned around in the man's hand.

She didn't see it plunge itself, as if by magic, into his throat.

But the boy did.

For a moment he looked at the dying man in horror, seeing the life leave his eyes.

His same horrified gaze travelled to the girl.

He saw a magic-user.

Then he saw the girl.

He though quickly, knowing that, if he had any doubts, he had to either leave her or get rid of them there and then because the people at the door were screaming. Would he look at the girl with eyes clouded by fear, seeing only the magic-user?

Or would he see her?

He blinked and the horror was gone. Once again he saw only the girl. He ran to her and seized her. She screamed for a moment, thinking it to be the man, before she saw it was the boy. The scream reminded the people she was there.

"Witch!" cried one in horror. "She is a witch!"

The chant was taken up. As the boy dragged the girl out of bed, throwing her cloak at her, seized their scant belongings and began dragging her out.

"Beware the witch!" he yelled. "She will cast a spell on you if you get in her way! Let me take her a safe distance away!"

This caused the people to retreat rapidly. He dragged the girl through, feeling her flinch a little at every time someone glared at her. He dragged her outside and got on the horse. "Come on," he ordered. She obeyed, too numb to argue.

It wasn't until the light of morning that she spoke.

"They thought I murdered him," she said through lips which almost didn't move.

"It doesn't matter," the boy said urgently.

"They were right."

She was crying.

"I murdered him," she told him, tears in her voice as well as on her face. "I'll let you have the horse."

This was so unexpected that the boy almost turned around. "What are you on about?"

"When you sniff leave."

"I'm not leaving," the boy said. "Don't be stupid."

"You...Aren't?"

"No. Your father told me about you having powers," he said, not letting her know how much she had scared him. "it saved me, so who cares? The guy was a jerk anyway."

"But that didn't mean he deserved to die."

"No, but what he was going to do does." His tone marked the end of the conversation. Unfortunately, it wasn't the end of the matter. It was quickly spreading that a boy and an older girl on a horse were a witch and her assistant. People were on the look-out and it made them wary. The boy and the girl were noticing the marked drop in temperature, now. They noticed the snow as they decided to sleep in an abandoned house for the night as opposed to risking another rent-house where people would notice them. They had already been given some suspicious looks.

"It's very cold, isn't it?" she asked him, shivering.

"No. Don't be such a wuss," he snapped.

"It's snowing outside," she pointed out.

"Yeah? So?"

"Don't you think it's pretty?"

"I think it's damn annoying, now get some rest," he ordered. She smiled and acquiesced. They huddled together on the cold floor, the horse tied up outside.

And, for once, the boy didn't object to it.

For the second night in a row the girl was awoken by something.

Here eyes flickered open and for a moment she wondered why she felt numb on one side. She remembered the cold, then, and moved slightly. A small sound of protest escaped the lips of someone behind her. She looked around as she sat up, down on the boy. In sleep he looked much more peaceful than he did while awake. He looked sweet, completely relaxed. For once he didn't look like he had walked a hundred miles and lived twice that number of years. He almost looked his age.

A sound reminded her of something. A small snicker, like that of a horse, had awoken her. It came again, but louder. The boy's eyes opened as well. He yawned silently, the movement conflicting with the alarm in his eyes. He and the girl stood and peered out the window.

A crowd of people were gathered at the back of the house, where they had tied up the horse. They held torches which were made all the brighter by the contrast with that and the cold, still-falling snow.

"We have to go," whispered the girl. Silently the boy nodded. They slipped out of a side entrance and edged around the house. They were in the front too. So they snuck in through the window of the next house. They slipped through that house, not waking any of those inside. They did the same again, slipping through the next house too. They did this a few times until they were far from the house they originally stayed at, before they snuck out into the street and began to run.

The night was cold, so cold, and they had not eaten all day. Both hunger and frostbite bit at them, almost teasingly, as they made their way through mysterious streets and unknown places. Eventually they stopped in a hidden ally where they were sure they would be safe.

They huddled together for warmth, teeth chattering. To distract themselves, they began to talk.

"I used to know this place so well," the boy began. "The people, I mean, not the streets. I never thought anything could make someone go like this. Like they're animals instead of people."

"Did you live here once?" asked the girl.

The boy was silent for a while, as if debating whether to tell the girl his history or not. He eventually told her, "my mother died giving birth to me. My father wasn't very upset by it, at least I thought he wasn't, but then I saw your parents and how they grieved just because they wouldn't be seeing you for a while. I don't think he was very sad." They boy's tone had become bitter and harsh.

"Are y-you sure?" the girl asked. "Different people have different ways of showing emotion."

He was silent for a while. "Maybe. After that he sort of let me do my own thing. I spent a lot of time at the merchant's square. I learned to speak a couple other languages there."

"Didn't anyone else suspicious at the little kid being there?"

"I just told them I was a merchant's son and they bought it. It didn't really worry anyone." There was a touch of sadness in his voice. "But my father decided that I should learn to read and write. He gave me books and read them to me out loud, then asked me what every word read, then told me to write it."

"But how could anyone learn like that?" cried the girl.

"Because he would hit me if I didn't learn it. I learned faster and faster so that, eventually, I never got hit."

"That must have been awful."

"It ended eventually."

"How?"

The boy tried to smile but it was so bitter that it ended up being a grimace. "He told me he was leaving for another place and that I should not follow him. Also, that I was another man's son and he only married my mother for the money she had."

Her arms closed around him a little tighter, as if she would impart some of her warmth, not a physical kind, but warmth of a different type, to him. "Oh...I'm so...Sorry."

"Then he left. I took a few jobs as a translator. One of them made it so that I had to live in a place near your house. That was how I ended up there."

"I wouldn't have been able to survive like that," she whispered. "No wonder you always look so old."

"Huh?"

"The way you walk and talk...It's like you're older than you are. Like you're body hasn't caught up with your heart and mind yet."

"Huh." This time it wasn't a question. "I never realised...And what about you? I've told you my life story, now it's time for your own. Come on, spit it out." They were both shivering now, trying to distract themselves from the snow which fell.

"There isn't really very much to tell," admitted the girl. She didn't want to tell him how she had grown up in a tight-knit family, the bonds of love strong between them. How her mother had been unable to have any more children after herself without risk to her life or how her father would not take another wife out of love for his current one. How they cherished each other. Instead she chose a safer topic. "We used to go to fancy dinners and things like that a lot when I was little."

"Yeah?" asked the boy. "What were they like?"

"The food was delicious. Every kind you can imagine, but only the best," she recounted dreamily. "Everything was done up beautifully. Elegantly. All the ladies were like flowers, all the men were like gods."

"Like...gods?" the boy frowned, not liking what he was hearing.

"Like gods," she affirmed. "They were so kind to me. Like my father, but they didn't love me. I was so impressed by them. By those men which were kind not out of love, which is honourable enough in itself, but just because they _could_ be. And they were strong, powerful men too. Men who were so influential that they could order me killed and no-one would dare disobey, even my own parents. Yes they were still so...Caring. I think I would follow anyone like that to the ends of the earth."

"Sounds kind of dumb to me," scoffed the boy, trying to get the conversation back onto familiar grounds. Men like gods? He couldn't believe that. "When was the last time you went to one of those things?"

"Oh, a long time ago. Now that I think about it, that's probably because we started to have less money then. After that I just went to normal celebrations. It was fun, though," she finished, a little guiltily, as if by demeaning her own circumstances would be offensive to the boy, seeing how bad his own had been.

"Sounds like it," he commented dryly.

They sat in silence for a while, the cold having long past made them numb. "I can't feel my fingers," the girl whispered.

"Neither can I."

"I thought you said you didn't mind the cold?"

"I don't. I mind being numb."

She smiled. "I guess, with me, it's kind of the other way around."

"I've always liked the cold," mumbled the boy. "There's just something about it which is so sharp, but clear. It's comforting. It's like everything makes sense when it's cold. You know who to fight when it's cold. I always fought in the cold. The other boys. In the warm weather some of them would win fights and I would lose but in the cold weather, even if the guy was twice my size, I would always win."

The girl closed her eyes and suddenly understood a lot more about the boy. Neglected from he start, he would have begun looking for someone to love him. But enough rejections, from his father, from the world in general, made him start looking fro something to fight instead. Something that he could blame for everything gone wrong. Something which he could pummel into submission. And the cold weather would sharpen him, like a blade of ice. He was like ice inside, cold, intelligent. But there was fire there too. Like a fire inside an icy exterior, it only showed when the ice would melt a little from the fire within. Then it showed him to be stubborn. To be emotional. But it also showed him to be caring, even...Loving. But he did not know how to care. He only knew how to fight the world, not care for it.

But she would change that.

She would show him that he was the closest friend she had ever had, much closer to those people she called friends, those girls who giggled at the pain of others and who were so frail only because they chose to be.

She would show him she cared.

She closed her eyes, as if to imprint it on her brain.

_I'll show him I care..._

The boy wondered why she had gone silent. "Hey." She said nothing. "_Hey_." Still nothing. He tried to look up at her but found her to have shut her eyes. "Sleeping?" he asked in disbelief, pouting, ignoring the feeling of dread, of fear, which had suddenly rose up inside him, ignoring the fact that she may not be sleeping. "Fine, sleep then," he snapped sulkily, mostly out of the terrible fear which made him want to scream, the fear of what he would find if he tried to wake her.

Because, in the girl, he had found something different, something special. He had found a genuinely caring heart, an intelligent mind, everything he had ever dreamed of in every fantasy he had of the ideal friend, even of a mother. Somehow he found found both his ideal friend and the mother he never knew in this girl. She had melted something frozen inside him. She had left a little piece of warmth in his chest which now shrunk, as if in fear it's maker was...

He couldn't think of it.

Clutching at the arms which enclosed him, convincing himself that not only were they still warm but they weren't cooling, they were still throbbing slightly with life, he held the other close.

His eyes shut. His brow, which had unconsciously wrinkled, relaxed.

A single tear froze upon his cheek as if, in sleep, he had realised that the warm heart which had warmed his own was no longer beating.  
A few days later someone came across two frozen bodies. Many presumed they were mother and child at first because of the way each huddled into the other, not just for warmth, but as if their hearts would break should they become entwined. After they saw the youth of both, all then presumed they had to be brother and sister and many shed a tear over two members of the same family freezing to death on those cold streets, cried out with words such as, "why did no-one help them?" and, "how I wish I could have known...I would have offered them my home!"Some of the criers of these words were those who had hunted the so-called witch and her assistant. They never knew their quarry was right there in front of them, the work they had tried to complete done by something so simple and yet so effective as nature herself. Then they saw the difference in features and concluded that the two could not have been so close as family. They had simply been two street urchins huddling together fr warmth. And so the interest waned, as if it were not the actual deaths which intrigued them, but the romantic story which led to it. But the two deaths stuck in the minds of a few, and some would come to visit and revisit the combined grave of the two unknown children.

There had just been something about how they had clung together which sparked questions like how could two street urchins become so close? How could such love exist amongst such poverty?

Eventually even those few forgot and eventually the grave stopped being visited. But there was a seed planted in the hearts of those few and, every winter time, they would keep an eye out for homeless street children and, if they had room, would give them warm food and a bed for the night, perhaps preventing a few more such deaths.

The next year brought sorrow for two couples. One Aunt and Uncle who had high hopes they would meet a niece, and instead were bitterly disappointed by her absence which suggested death. And the parents of the girl were distraught. They felt like their livelihood had been taken from them. They eventually managed their finances so they earned back much of what they had lost but felt no joy from it. As if trying to find their daughter again they eschewed high society and began an orphanage. They eventually found joy again, both in each other and in the children they found. But there was always something missing. They were always positive that they were missing a child. They never considered, or didn't want to consider, that they were still looking for their beloved daughter.

At first many times, then fewer as the years dragged on, they wondered what had happened to their daughter, who had been talented in that secret way, and who had been sweet and warm as if lit from inside. And, occasionally, they wondered what happened to the boy too, to that strange little boy who carried the weight of the world around him, who looked at their daughter with wide eyes, as if seeing something for the first time both that amazed and awed, with eyes so different from their own.

The one with those blue-green eyes.

*****

Momo Hinamori awoke. Her head felt fuzzy. She shivered. But then she realised it was warm and looked around. She felt a pang, like she was holding something very precious which had gone. She looked around.

There was nobody there.

*****

Toshiro Hitsugaia awoke. He shivered for a moment, for some reason expecting it to be icy cold. But it wasn't. He looked around, then clutched his chest. A weight had come down on his heart, pulling it down. Why did he feel like he suddenly wanted, very much to scream?

He took in a deep breath, let it out. The feeling didn't leave. He sat up and looked around, frowning in irritation to mask the feeling.

*****

"Hi, I'm Momo," a happy voice introduced.

"Yeah, so?" he asked in irritation before looking up. Hitsugaia stared for a moment, wondering why the sensation of a cold hand clutching his heart, the one he had felt since he awoke, suddenly receded. "Uh...Sorry, I guess that was kind of rude. I'm Toshiro Hitsugaia."

"Nice to meet you," the girl smiled, bowing to him slightly. "I just wanted to say I really like your hair. It's white as snow."

"Yeah, I guess so," he muttered, disconcerted by how unstable he was because of this girl's presence.

"It kind of makes you look old and young at the same time," she mused thoughtfully. An expression passed over her face, a mirror of the one flickering across his. Kind of like recognition, but of something alien.

"D-does it?" stuttered Hitsugaia, trying to figure out what it was about the moment which made him break out in a cold sweat.

"Yeah, but it suits you!" Clarified Momo. They spoke for a while more, both concluding, reluctantly on Hitsugaia's part, that they liked the other.

They forgot the moment of recognition had ever happened.

The next day they ate watermelons together.


	6. A Broken Brotherhood

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of it's associated fictional characters or locations.

**Before I Died**

**A Broken Brotherhood**

Once there was a family. This family was both powerful and rich. But this family had a secret.

One of it's son, a proud man, had married. He had married a woman from another family, a family on equal terms of nobility as his. He had been taught to marry to improve the family, and so he did so without question, even though he had never met his betrothed.

He married and found the woman to be sweet and to possess passable looks. It was a curiosity as to why her family had so willingly parted with her with so little negotiation so very quickly. It was almost as if they had been eager to be rid of her.

During their wedding and the days soon after the man examined his wide carefully. Despite how hard he looked he found no fault in her which would merit her family's treatment of her. So he relaxed his guard and was content with his wife.

But, after a while, he noticed some odd behaviour.

It was during the first month of their marriage. That day he found his wife sobbing. He was alarmed and asked her what was the matter. She looked at him with tear filled eyes and confessed, "I have failed you."

He was confused and had asked for some clarification.

"Today my monthly curse began. I am not with child."

He was uncomfortable, but he did not show it. He consoled her with logic when, perhaps, sweetness would have been better. But he had been raised to always use his brain, not to rely on his heart, so he used cool logic. "This is only the first month of our marriage. Some remain childless for years."

Eventually she stopped her wracking sobs but for the next few days, until what she had referred to as er 'monthly curse' had ended, she would have the habit of being melancholy for all of the time. Her sweetness evaporated and she would be bitter and even sharp with him, though she would always apologise later. She also had the unpleasant habit of, at random moments, breaking into loud, discomforting sobs and having to exit the room. At first he tried to console her again with logic but this had little or no affect.

Though eventually this period passed and she again became the sweet, obedient woman he had taken as his wife. He dismissed it as a passing madness and did not think of it until it happened again the next month. And then again the month after that. He eventually came to realise that her madness was passing, yes, but only in the same way the moon was passing. It was a passing recurrence, a madness for children aggravated by the reminder that she was without any.

On the sixth month of their marriage he left his home as he usually did but, without alerting his wife of the fact, he went to the home of her family. He asked them what was the matter with her.

He was then told that she had been in a previous marriage. And not only that but had also had another betrothal between that previous marriage and her current one.

"A marriage, a betrothal, and finally marriage to myself!" he cried. "What nonsense is this?"

"Not nonsense," the head of the family assured him. "The first marriage was broken off because, despite how my daughter wanted children, it was eventually proven that she was barren. She had wanted children before but, after that, she became desperate for them, and when the second proposal was made, she began immediately trying for them."

"Before the wedding?" asked the man.

"Yes. Her fiancee was both a rascal and a drunkard and positively invited the union. But he became aggravated by how she carried on when proven she was not with child and broke off the betrothal."

"But why had I heard nothing of this?" exclaimed the other.

"Because it was all done in a place far away from here, under a different name."

"Trickery!" spat the man.

"Perhaps, but we could not risk the same thing repeating itself, and so you had to be kept unaware," the Head of the house replied calmly.

"But why did you not abandon her when you changed names? Surely that would have been the logical thing to do."

"Logical? Perhaps. But we could not abandon her. She is a sweet-hearted thing, despite her faults. And the joining of our families has strengthened them both."

The man had to conclude this was true. "But what do I do with her now? A barren, mad wife?"

"Perhaps, by giving her a child or two, you could distract her from her monthly madness?"

"But...She is barren-"

He smiled. "You misunderstand. I don't mean get her _with_ child. I mean _give her_ a child."

For the next three months the woman retired from society. When she came back out again, a small baby was presented to the world.

She told everyone that the birth and pregnancy had been troublesome, and so she had been unable to visit or receive visitors for those three months, and her husband had been taking care of her. She told all that she had been unaware of the pregnancy for the first six months and, for the last three, that was when the babe within her had begun to wear on her and make it's presence known. She got both sympathy and congratulations for her baby boy. Her husband also received commendations for his devotion.

Only she and her husband knew that the child was adopted and the three months had been spent out of town, looking for a pregnant woman to take a child from. Finally they had come across a woman who was coaxed into telling them that her child was that of a married man. When she had found that she was pregnant she had fled her home and now was regarded as anonymous with a false name. She had agreed to give her child to them if they would pay for her passage back to her home.

But the only ones who knew this were the man, his wife, and the original mother, whom they would never see again.

The man was now perfectly content. Mostly, anyway. There was always that niggling regret that he could not sire a son himself, but he paid no attention to it. His family were still respectable and unsullied. His wife was mostly sweet and obedient again, with only slight mood swings when the time of month came again, a generally melancholy air which was easily dispelled by the presence of her son. He had an heir. As the years passed his son proved to be of good breeding, with a handsome face, strong body and of sweet countenance.

But, as the stage of babyhood passed, his wife regressed back to what she had been before the child. She would cry and sob at certain times and be, generally, a great nuisance.

So they did it yet again.

This time the child was that of an old prostitute with yellow teeth. She was nearer to her time so there was some curiosity to the new boy's appearance, but it was mostly subsided by the story of another bad pregnancy, but one which had resulted in an earlier birth.

The man, now the 'father' of two 'sons' was beginning to become somewhat worried by this time. Would they have to keep finding unborn children to claim as their own? But, as it turned out, he did not have to worry.

For years the woman was happy. She raised both her first and second son in a state of bliss with only rare shadows of sadness when her 'monthly curse' came. She lavished lover on the both of them. Her first son was quickly proving to be both good at sports and handsome, with wide lilac eyes, silky black hair, and pale skin. Their mother loved to adorn his beautiful hair with feathers of bright birds.

The toddler was a lively one. He would always demand his mother's attention and she loved it. He was showing to be strong as well.

But then things began to change.

It became obvious that the younger son was not, nor ever would he be, handsome in the wide-eyed and pale-skin manner which was preferred at that time. His hair was both exceedingly fine and frizzly uncontrollable, so he was kept bald. His face was full of harsh angles which made him look like he was a thug of some kind, at least to the society of that time and place.

It became even more obvious that he was a fighter. When playing with the children he would always come home with one or even two black eyes, along with numerous other injuries. He was a born fighter with both the talent and inclination for it.

He was reprimanded by both mother and father but it never did any good.

The older son watched this with eyes shuttered from certain thing. The self-imposed shutters made him overlook his parent's scoldings of the younger boy. Instead he saw the proud boy with two black eyes who was meant to be his brother, though he knew he wasn't. He saw him and thought, _that is what glory is_. He became exceedingly jealous of his younger adopted sibling. He had always wanted to fight. Despite him amiability he had always wished to physically prove himself, had shaken with anger and wanted to vent it with violence, but had always held himself back. It had always been like an itch he made himself unable to scratch. Before his brother began to show his inclination for violence he had been able to, for the most part, ignore it, but now? Now that itch was aggravated by his younger adoptive brother.

He had no idea that the younger sibling looked upon him in the same manner the other did. He too looked at his older brother and felt envious admiration. He was well aware of his supposed ugliness, never knowing that his brother didn't actually regard him as so. His baldness. He wanted so badly to be as beautiful as his older brother so that ladies in the street would not see them together in the street, compare the two 'siblings' and tut, saying, "what a shame." He regarded beauty as the most important thing in the world, apart from fighting.

The two brothers continued in this manner for a while, enviously admiring each other from afar.

Then the woman became pregnant.

It turned out that she was not barren, only extraordinarily difficult too sire a child with. But now she was going to have one. She devoted all her time to the new baby's things and touching her enlarging abdomen with fingers quavering with excitement.

She forgot all about those two children she used to regard as sons. Now that she had the real thing she did like a child would do when confronted with the choice between a toy horse and the real thing. She abandoned them. She no longer regarded them as sons. Both knew that they were not her flesh and blood but had regarded her as mother. They had received her love and loved her back. Now to receive only coolness...

So they turned on each other. Both had previously regarded what the other had as what made their mother love them. An ability to fight and beauty. Neither seemed to remember the scoldings the younger had received for his brawling, or the many assurances the older had received that his beauty was not what made the mother love him. Both decided to get what they could not have.

The older began by being more easy to anger. At first this was put down to feeling challenged by the presence of a new child. But then he began to fight his peers, at first badly, then well, and it was generally decided that the violence was a hidden trait.

This was scolded but the boy took no notice. He was glorious and comfortable without that constant nagging itch which wanted to hit out at the world, seeing as that was exactly what he was doing, and confidant that soon his mother's love would be restored to him.

The younger boy was no better. He stole those bright-coloured feathers his mother had used to adorn the older brother and tried them on. He had no hair to wind them through but managed to stick them so they stayed on the edge of his eye attractively, or so he thought. He grew his hair and convinced himself that, should he brush it enough, it would go straight and silky like his older brother's. He also began to spend more time selecting his clothing in the morning, even thought there wasn't much selection, and took care no to stain his clothes.

But it didn't work. So the two boys turned their sights on each other. With angry, desperate eyes that did not see the negligence on both sides, the boys decided that the mother's love so absented from them must be wasted on the other boy. Neither had missed the change in the other. They decided that what the had been before had been what their mother loved, conveniently forgetting that it was the thing she abandoned, but felt that they were too far gone to revert to what they had been. They decided that they would ruin the other's chances by ruining what they were trying to do.

It began by the older criticising the younger.

"You're ruined those feathers now. They're all crumbled and sticky. Mother will be so angry."

"You spilled something on those pants. I think that's going to stain."

"You're hair is awful. All fuzzy and sticking up. You'd do better to cut it off."

These criticisms began wearing at the younger. They planted the seed of bitterness in his heart and watered it.

The older sparked off the fight by another remark.

"That looks ugly on you. Then again, all clothing looks ugly on you."

The younger gave rise to the flame.

The punch connected on the older's chin and the fight was on. They hit out against each other until the younger was knocked out and the older collapsed in a heap.

They were found and revived and both soundly punished.

It happened again the next day.

Every day they fought until one or both collapsed. Their hatred waned and waxed. At times they fought tooth and nail, trying to kill each other. At others they wrestled boyishly in the mockery of real battles, giving a glimpse to what good friends they could have been if they were not competing for the love of their cold mother.

Then the mother in question died.

As if in retribution for the two lies the birth was difficult and resulted in not one but two deaths, of both mother and child. It came as no real surprise to society in general. After all, it had seemed as though the pregnancies were getting harder. First one laid her up in bed for three months, second laid her up in bed again and an earlier birth.

The blow was crushing to the two boys. Their mother had become a distant figurehead, a goddess who's favours they fought for.

Now she was gone.

The years to adulthood were both easier and harder. Easier because they fought less, having no one to fight for except themselves. Harder because, when they fought, they fought to kill.

The times between fights showed them to be both distant and cold to each other. They carried on as they had before. The older was the handsome son who was liked again now he had stopped brawling so much. The younger was a fighter again and pretended not to care for beauty.

The fights seemed to grow like flowers with blood and bruises for petals. A seed would be planted by a fight previously lost or won. The loser would feel resentment for the winner and the winner would strut around like they had won some great match. The resentment would build, the fight would grow, watered and pruned into shape by snide remarks and other factors. A bud would form when that final, cutting remark was made, which made one boy so enraged he wanted to kill, that was when the flower bloomed.

And they would fight, oh, how they would fight.

The few that saw them fight were thankful that the two never became friendlier towards each other, never teamed up. Because, if they did, no-one would be strong enough to stop them. They fought to kill and would get very close.

There were no more play fights.

Only blood.

Only winning.

And only losing.

The father had long ago given up on reprimanding his two 'sons' for their behaviour. His philosophy on the matter was that, _they aren't mine and I don't care if they kill each other_. This was a contrast to what he had felt before. Before he had felt affection and even love for them. But now they were as good as dead to him.

Eventually the man decided to take another wife. The chosen was not a young girl. She was his elder and he had known her for years. They strongly suspected that they would not be able to have any children together because of their age but did not care. They were comfortable with each other and even felt the kindling of love, something the man hadn't felt for his first wife. The wedding day was decided.

Leading up to the wedding day the two boys were kept busy and far from each other. This was partly from the wishes of their adoptive father and partly coincidence. Everyone hoped the distance would make them friends and that this would continue when the distance was gone once more.

They all thought wrong.

The younger one was aggravated by the preparations more than anything. Again and again he was reminded that he was not his beautiful brother, that he was _ugly_. The fact was self-evident. He would dress up in the incredibly beautiful clothing and look in the mirror, be pleased with what he saw as he looked from his feet to his neck. Then he would look at his face and head and be reminded of his unattractiveness.

The older one was aggravated by the itch which meant he wanted to fight. The itch was fairly common to him. It was one of the things which drove him to fight his brother again and again. But the long absence from fighting meant that it grew worse He became agitated and snapped at the clothing-makers who gushed over how good he looked. He would be forced to sit still through fittings when all he wanted to do was fight and fight to kill.

The wedding took place near a lake. The ceremony went without hitch. It was what came after which was the problem.

If the build up to their previous fights had been a flower then this was an explosion. Each man, for that was now what they had become, wanted to fight the other more and more each passing minute. Everything felt too tight, too hot, too _something_. During the ceremony they stood next to each other, each incredibly aware of the other's presence. Like a ticking bomb the time ticked on, ticking nearer to disaster by every passing moment. The need for violence was a constant building pressure in each man , building stronger and stronger. Finally the ceremony was finished. With smiles they congratulated their father and his new wife. They then left.

There was a jetty which led out to the lake, a small boat tied to it. But they ignored the boat. One followed the other to the jetty.

No words were exchanged.

All they saw was a burning hate, a reflection of their own, in the other's eyes.

And they fought.

How they fought.

It was surely the fight to end all possible or even probable fights. It was violent and hate-filled, the embodiment of murderous rage.

No-one came out to witness it, which was lucky. They would have been scarred and scared for the rest of their life.

For an age they fought, yet it was less than an hour. The age was only in the mind of the fighters, who were, suddenly, very, very tired of fighting.

The ticking bomb had exploded.

They had fought.

The explosion was done.

And they stopped.

Almost as one mind they stopped. Like years of fighting had worn it out, they just stopped.

The younger looked at the elder.

The elder looked at the younger.

One, or perhaps both, said, "we've been fools."

The other, or again perhaps both, said, "of the worst kind."

Beaten almost senseless and near death, they both reached out a hand.

And just as they did so, the old, worn wood on which they'd been fighting furiously, gave way.

Neither could swim.

Panic was the emotion which swept them. They both looked at the waters whirling around them and, very much, did not want to die. They had landed far apart. They thrashed, knowing not that they should have lain still to conserve energy. As it was their air was wasted.

With their last gasps of breath they both tried to say one word.

_Brother_.

The younger opened his mouth but water rushed in as air rushed out. He coughed, quickly losing conciousness.

_Brother_.

The older tried the same with the same effect.

With dulling eyes they saw what would be their last sight.

The other brother, for that was what they had now become, reaching for them.

The two reached for each other as they had never reached before.

Yet both died without reached far enough.

When their bodies washed up, everyone thought they had killed each other in their anger and hate.

In a way, everyone was right.

But in a bigger, more important way, everyone was wrong.

Strange things happen when deaths occurs.

Two souls in two different bodies, tied by odd ties, wanting what the other has, may not wake the same way they died.

Yumichika Aesegawa awoke. For a moment he was reaching for something, desperate to reach it. Then he blinked, put his arm down. What had he been reaching for?

Putting the matter aside and then forgetting it, he sat up and looked around. He was near a lake and, for a moment, was filled with a terrible fear. But it was brief and passed. He crept to the lake, looked at the still waters.

And gasped.

He saw a familiar face. Pale skin, wide lilac eyes and silky black hair greeted him where he had expected baldness and sharpness for a reason he could not put a name onto.

Ikkaku Mandrame awoke. He was reaching, reaching for something he had to grasp...But there was nothing there so he put down his arm, wondering why it had been raised and then forgetting the strange phenomenon for ever. He rolled over. Ikkkau saw he was near a lake.

For a moment he, very much, wanted to run away.

But then he shook his head and the feeling was gone. He crawled to the lake, splashed his face with water and looked at his reflection as the water stilled.

His mouth fell agape.

Baldness and sharp lines were what he saw when, for some reason, he had expected beauty.

He didn't feel disappointed in the least and, indeed, did not think sharpness so ugly at all.

Ikkaku suddenly became aware of an itch inside him, a need of some kind...But which he could not fulfil.

But why not?

The question stumped him.

Elation swamped him.

What ever reason there had been for not scratching this itch, it was gone now.

A while later, not knowing they had awoke around the same lake, the two met up. They eyes each other for a moment, getting ready for that rush of feeling which would mean they wanted to fight.

It never came. They relaxed, looking at each other curiously. For the first time they saw someone who could fight them but felt no real desire for it.

"You're kind of ugly, you know," said the one with black hair after a long pause.

"Yeah? What's it to you, pretty-boy?" replied the other. They mulled these comments over.

"Want to get some Sake?"

"Sure."

It was the start of something which surely should have begun a long time ago.

A broken brotherhood was fixed.


	7. The Twisted Path

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of it's associated fictional characters or locations.

**Before I Died**

**The Twisted Path**

Once upon a time there was a brother, a sister, a mother and a father. The family lived closely, closer than others of their time. They had a genuine affection for each other which was nourished and protected. The father was a hard worker who wished he could make more time to play with and teach his children, as they didn't earn enough for a tutor for them so the parents had to teach them reading and writing themselves if they did not wish the children to be illiterate. The mother was devoted to her house and family. She had the habit of dressing the daughter up and saying how pretty she was. The girl never really liked dressing up but it pleased her mother so she pretended to enjoy it. The boy, who was the girl's elder, was not physically strong or fast, but was quick of mind and had the knack of seeing how things fitted together. The girl was the youngest. She was a quiet, shy thing who nevertheless became delightfully sweet and charmingly funny amongst those she trusted.

The family lived together, thrived together, ate, slept, and played together. As all families do they fought amongst themselves, but it never came to anything more than a few minutes of hurt feelings. The boy was proving to be very intelligent in the workings of machines. That knack which told him how things fit together made him able to know the precise workings of mechanisms, which was especially useful when they broke down. He first delighted his family with his ability to make absurd-looking machines work., then his neighbours. He became renown throughout the neighbourhood as the boy who could make anything work. Villagers came far and wide to ask him to fix what little machinery they had, but this soon bored the boy. He began inventing machines himself. Anything new which he came across he would pull it apart and work out how it worked down to the most minute detail before becoming bored with that as well. The boy's inquisitive mind would ingest all sorts of information with a rapidity which astounded others. Even so he always remained a happy boy full of delight and an unquenchable curiosity. All of his family were extraordinarily proud of him.

But, as it turned out, it couldn't last for ever.

When the girl and boy were still children disaster struck.

The girl began to sicken.

At first it was barely noticeable. Slight shadows appeared under her eyes where previously there had been none. She was less active. Her laugh was a little quieter and seemed to drain her.

But, after a while, things got worse and worse. She did not get up until far past sunrise, when previously she had been an early riser. She also began sleeping earlier. While she did sleep it was fitful and she would moan at regular intervals. Eating became an effort for her, then almost impossible.

It became clear that she was sickening.

The family tried to do everything they could for her. At first they insisted she sleep and eat. But it was impossible for her to do either. All she would want to do was stay near her brother. She liked her parents to be there, but it became a necessity for her brother to be there. If he was not there she would cry tears she could not afford, tears which seemed to take a little more of her life with each salty drop.

So he stayed with her.

The parents watched this with fearful and sometimes jealous eyes, and something in each of them twisted, just a little.

Then something occurred to the father.

"Son," he said one day in an epiphany of hope. "Could you cure her?"

His mother and father looked at him with eyes wide with hope as they ate in the daughter's room. She slept, unaware. The hope in his parents eyes pinned the boy like a steel pin would a butterfly and he could not outright refuse.

He told them he probably could not do it. That medicine was a tricky science. That he had never studied it. But they looked at him with wide, hopeful eyes, and the boy said he would try.

For the first time the innocent boy feared his parents.

What made him scared, so very, very scared, was the thought of what would happen if he killed that hope that filled his parents eyes.

The hope was all there was.

No love any more.

So what would happen if he failed?

If he killed that hope?

There would be nothing.

They boy began to study.

He studied the workings of the body and medicine harder than anything he had ever done. It became everything. He would sit with doctors and books on the body, which his parents would buy with a frantic eagerness for him with their hard-earned savings, learning how everything fit together.

For the first time learning something new did not bring him joy.

His hands shook as he turned the pages.

His minds grasped at the facts and swallowed them with an almost unnatural speed, his dying sister beside him serving as a reminder of why he learned.

But it was doomed to failure from the start.

The boy grew more and more frantic as he realised, with a horror which made him want to die himself, that his sister had a disease for which there was no cure.

His parents came in once every hour to visit him. They would inquire about his studies with a false brightness which was actually that horrible, horrible hope. Their visits would always end with the question, "do you know what she has?"

He figured it out early, but could not say it, for to say it , to put it into words, would be to acknowledge it as a certainty. He would always answer, "not yet."

As his sister's illness progressed the visits grew shorter and shorter.

It became that the boy was no longer their son in their eyes.

In those horribly hopeful eyes.

He had become nothing more than an end to a means.

Their visits now consisted of them, once a day, coming in without the false smiles and fake conversation which was so dreadful a parody of days gone past, just looking at him with those eyes which were like bright suns in their heads, blinding and burning the boy with their hope.

"Can you cure her yet?"

"Not yet."

He could not take away the 'yet'.

For, if he did that, those suns would be gone and their would be nothing but a dark nothingness which would so much more awful than the hope.

And, even though the hope burned him, it was better than having two empty, dead-on-the-inside parents.

By now he had realised that they did not care about him.

They only cared about _her_.

And he realised that he felt the same.

The only thing in his world...

...Was _her_.

Was dying.

He no longer went outside. Neighbours wondered about the bright, happy, curious boy and cheerful family which had always been out and about. But soon, even they heard the rumours. Even they realised that an illness had wracked the family.

Deep inside each of those people who had known the family, something unacknowledged, some remnant from the days of predators and prey, where prey had to stick together or die, told each of them that something had turned predator in that house and was preying on the family.

Something was twisting them all.

They all stayed away.

Each and every one of them.

The boy soon became the youngest expert on medicine in the area, not that he or anybody else knew it. He had not the time to explore his knowledge, only to swallow more and more of it as if it were medicine and he the sick one.

But it didn't help.

And the sister died.

She slipped away during the night, like she had never been alive, and all there had ever been was her pale, thin, dead corpse, lying there, clutching at her brother's hand.

The funeral was small.

There was only three people.

Four, if you counted the girl.

She was lowered into the cold, dark earth, in what had been her favourite dress. It was one for festivities, a bright, colourful thing. It seemed out of place in that world of muted browns and dark colours.

And, then, as if she had never been, she was gone.

Something inside each of them twisted a little more.

The boys fears came true.

The sun was gone.

All there was was darkness.

They could not count on each other for condolences. Or, at least, the boy couldn't count on his parents.

His father never looked at him any more. It was like two children had died instead of one. Or maybe the father had, in his mind, sacrificed his son to the gods so his daughter would live. But his daughter was gone and, to the father, his son was as well, even though he was always there. If the boy spoke to his father his father would ignore him or look at him like he did not recognise him.

Soon the boy stopped speaking to him.

The father had also seemed to lose faith in the gods, of what ever had kept him going before the sickness. He went from work to home.

He was empty.

But, though his father's betrayal made the boy want to die so he would not have to see the constant rejection, his mother made him want to run away and never come back. He tried ignoring her, at first, but it never worked, instead making her cry, which was, somehow, worse than anything she could do.

The mother had gone insane.

She had broken where the son and husband had twisted, and the broken shards of her mind cut at what sanity there was left.

She could not accept that her daughter was dead.

Like her husband, she had long given up on her son, as if he were the dead instead of her daughter, and could not accept that the boy lived and the girl didn't.

So her mind turned it around.

It became clear to her that the girl had lived.

And she never mentioned the boy's name.

It was like he had never existed.

But the girl did.

She would smile at the boy, call him to her with arms wide, as if in love, but the boy was not fooled for a moment. He saw the way her smile trembled and quaked. The way her whole body shook, as if in rejection of the lie the mother forced herself to believe in. Her eyes were the worst.

After a while of being empty, they filled with a terrifying insanity.

But, if he opposed her in the slightest ways, she would call him by his sister's name and wail and cry and beg him not to scare her so, beg him to stop pretending that she were a boy, or get angry and attack him.

She rarely attacked him and always denied it after, as if the slightest crack in what she thought was her life would make it all come down like the facade it was.

His mother saved all her deceased daughter's clothes and began dressing up her alive son in them, telling him not to wear boy's clothes. She would make him cook and clean with her in the dresses, prattling on about inconsequential things with an insane glint in her eye. If the boy did anything wrong she would snap and attack him.

The mother and son twisted a little more.

The boy could not stand these episodes so he began to drug his mother, growing special herbs in the little garden he had. He felt soothed when he was digging in the earth. At all other times an undercurrent of anxiety was present, but when he dug in the earth, gardening and the like, he would feel like he was accomplishing something.

It never occurred to him that, maybe, he felt soothed because he felt like he was accomplishing something.

Like he was looking for something he had lost deep in the dark, cold earth.

Something very, very precious.

When he was alone things got odd. He did not have the same bright curiosity as he did before. He still learned things, but with a frantic, almost necessary hunger that was too similar to the hunger with which he had consumed the medical knowledge for the boy to be comfortable with. But he felt he _had_ to learn.

He, quite literally, could not stop learning.

He needed to know _everything_.

His methods of learning became more perverted. Caterpillars were his favourite test subjects. He would test numerous acids and chemicals distilled from plants on them. He carefully documented the ways they writhed in their dying moments in his mind with no more emotion than he would notice a cloud in the sky.

One day his father came home and they all had dinner together. They ate in silence, as they always did. His mother's sick games always stopped when the father came home.

At mealtimes it was like he didn't exist.

This particular day he was silent for about half the meal before he spoke up.

"A co-worker's wife had a baby yesterday," he began. His speaking to them was odd in itself, the content of his speech even odder.

Then he made his meaning clear.

"I think we should have a child."

The thing that stuck out most for the boy from this was the 'a child'. Not 'another child.'

He truly didn't exist to them.

"That's a good idea," his mother said in a parody of joy. The boy recognised it for the insanity it was. "I can't think how we didn't have a child before this."

The boy left the table.

He glanced back a while later and saw his mother clearing away his bowl and utensils, looking at them oddly like she didn't know where they had come from.

They had all taken the twisted path.

The days improved for the mother and father. The father came home with something a little like life

in his eyes. The mother stopped dressing up the boy as a girl.

They still ignored the boy.

After about half a year the mother's stomach began to rise. She had fallen pregnant after a few months of trying.

The boy found himself in a turbulent storm of emotion so different from the apathy that had stalked him from so long.

Another child.

Another sister.

Joy.

Another child.

To replace the one who had been lost.

But what of the one had been forgotten?

Sadness.

Desperate grief.

Anger.

His mother still laid out three places at the table.

Would she continue doing this when the child came?

Anxiety.

Back and forth he whirled from one emotion to the other. He saw his father come back to life like a corpse raised from the dead. He saw the insanity in his mother's eyes fade a little every time she smiled, every time she rubbed her growing stomach.

Sometimes he even felt content.

It was a rare thing.

Then it happened.

One day his mother was clearing the table. She was now heavy with child. She and her husband were talking about the room they would put the baby in. None of them had gone into the girl's dead room since she had died. Like the boy, it stopped existing to them. They spoke of using the boy's room, blanking him out of their minds, wondering aloud why they never thought to put the room to use before.

The boy found himself questioning where he would sleep. But the question was without force. He found he did not mind giving up his room.

His mother paused in mid sentence.

His father looked up at her.

He looked at her.

On her face was an abject expression of mild shock.

She gasped.

She dropped the bowl she was carrying.

It clattered on the ground, the wood drumming a beat onto the hard ground which sounded like a heart beating quicker, then stopping.

She clutched at her belly.

She fell to her knees.

Then, in a moment of horror.

With disjointed.

Unconnected.

Thoughts.

Which were like glass in his mind.

In his brain.

The boy remembered the herb he had given her.

To sedate her.

That the herb.

Was rumoured.

To be.

Dangerous.

To women wanting children.

As it.

Increased.

The chance.

Of the child.

Dying.

Before it was born.

The woman rolled over to throw up, the liquid smelling foul.

But what was fouler in it's horror was the blood which streaked the back of the woman's skirt.

He was a murderer.

There was no question of what had happened. The father took care of the wife, taking away the stillborn child. She cried the tears that would have been the baby's. The remnants of her sanity were skewered on the broken shards of her mind.

The father put the stillborn child in a box and left it in a corner of the room. His grief made him silent once more.

The boy blamed himself. Something inside him had snapped forever, something which, before then, had only bent. He took the body of the child away to perform experiments on it.

It seemed to be like another caterpillar, just with the face of a baby.

The next month, things continued as they had done before the talk of another child had interrupted the broken state they lived in. His mother got worse. His father did too. He became coming home less and less. His mother began playing her games again. This time the boy bore the full brunt of it, not drugging her any more. He saw it as a fit punishment for murder. The games were worse, however.

'Accidents' began to occur regularly.

It was like something inside his mother blamed him for the death of the two previous children.

She never knew he felt that way too.

When they were cooking, she would spill boiling liquids on him and then apologise for it, brightly admonishing him for being so clumsy, as if it were his fault, belying her own apology. She would then, in a falsely relieved voice, state how it was lucky that it was not serious, even if it was.

One time she 'accidentally' pushed him into a fire.

He screamed in the incredible pain, rolling until the fire went out. He had a few serious burns. She admonished him, still calling him by the name of the girl long-deceased. Afterwards he treated his burns but he was forever marked in those places.

A few times he tried to hide from her, fear overriding his guilt. He would cover his body and face with mud, feeling good in the earth, like a part of him thought he should be underneath it. But his mother found him, wiping the mud off his face, ignoring the terrified tears which created tracks in the black mud, calling him silly for getting so dirty.

When he was alone at night and all was silent all he could her was his mother calling him by the name of his dead sister.

He would clutch at his ears and try to pull them off in an effort not to hear.

It could not continue like this forever.

One day the mother was cooking with a long, sharp knife.

She smiled with that trembling smile and asked her 'daughter' to hold the vegetable while she cut.

It was then she 'accidentally' cut off his middle finger.

The boy rushed out of the room, screaming and crying. He knew he had to immediately stop the bleeding or he would die. His medical knowledge saved his life.

But his mother spoke to the empty space like her 'daughter' was still there.

When he ran out of the room his mother gasped and said, "oh! I'm so sorry."

While he screamed she said, "you shouldn't have gotten in the way, you know."

As he wailed she said, "if you keep having these accidents, you might get seriously hurt."

As fresh screams arose, these more high-pitched than the last, as he splashed alcohol on the wound in an effort to clean it, she said, "you've got to be more careful, my daughter."

As he began to bandage the wound, muffled sobs and moans still coming from his eyes and lips, she looked at the empty space her son had been in and said, "at least it wasn't too serious this time."

She looked down and frowned. "Oh, dear. I must have spilled some sauce here. These vegetables are ruined now. What a pity."

She threw out the blood-covered vegetables and cleaned up the blood. She also threw out the severed finger.

The boy later retrieved it and buried it, one handed, in the earth above where his sister lay in her eternal rest.

A seed of defiance had been planted in the boy's heart by the incident. The presence of his father at the dinner table a few nights later made the seed grow. Before the man went to bed, after his mother had cleaned up, the boy went up to his father.

"Look at me," he said.

His father ignored him.

"_Look at me_," he repeated.

His father continued to ignore him.

But the boy would not be ignored.

He unwound the bandage around his hand and, without warning, thrust his hand in his father's line of sight.

The man was caught by the sigh of a four-fingered hand, blood still seeping from the wound where a fifth had been like a red eye weeping tragic tears.

"_This_ is what your wife did to me," the boy accused. "I am your son and you have ignored me all this time and now look what has happened."

For a long moment the man was silent. Then his horrified eyes glazed over. He stood and exited the room.

He still had not said a word to his son.

The boy stood, pale and silent for a moment. Then, with tears of a real nature, he re-bandaged his hand.

It was then he heard two cries.

One was a male's grunt of pain and exertion.

The second was the high-pitched squeal of a woman's horror.

He walked into his parent's room.

His father had stabbed himself.

And a small part of him cried out in despair.

And an even smaller part cried out in joy.

His mother remembered her daughter's funeral. Then she tried to forget it. But something in her remembered it and forced her child to dress in clothing of the same sort her other child had at that other funeral.

So the boy went to his father's funeral in festive clothes.

His father's acquaintances from work came to the funeral and looked at him with shocked eyes.

He felt ashamed.

But not over his father.

It was over that little spark of joy he had felt.

He hid his hands in the long, brightly coloured sleeves.

He didn't look at his father once.

It seemed fitting to ignore the one who had ignored him in life.

He went home with a queer smile on his lips which was more like a snarl.

It showed his teeth.

From then on her only wore the palest or darkest colours.

Only black and white, if he could help it.

The nearest thing if he couldn't.

A few nights after the funeral he dug up the body, dissected it, and reburied it before anyone noticed.

He found that he finally loved his father again.

He loved anything which taught him things.

The seed of rebellion, having sprouted, now grew up a twisted frame, digging thorns darkened by a twisted heart into the boy's mind.

The ultimate rebellion seemed to be murder.

After all, he already was one.

Three out of five members of his family were dead.

His sister.

That stillborn child.

His father.

All his fault.

He decided to finish the job.

So, one day, he snuck into his mother's bedroom while she slept. He stepped closer to her prostrate body where it lay, sleeping.

She rolled over and looked at him with eyes flat and heartless. Really, it wouldn't be murder. She was already dead on the inside.

She looked at the knife raised in his hand.

She sat up, smiling and called him his sister's name one more time.

"Sapphire."

Sapphire.

After the way his sister's hair had shone Sapphire blue in the sunlight.

His mother seized the knife as he got ready to stab her.

She helped him do it so it was more suicide than murder.

And, afterwards, to complete the job, he stabbed himself as well.

In his last moments he was at peace.

A woman awoke. She had been tired for such a long time. A lethargy hung upon her spirit.

And, on top of that, she felt disturbed.

She got up and looked around, looking for something.

Something which would soothe this disturbed feeling.

A...Man?

She got up and began looking.

Mayuri Kurosutchi awoke. He screamed, a sound alike to chalk screeching on a blackboard, and found he liked the sound. He thought he heard something. An echo of a name. He found the sound made him want to pull off his ears, so he tried to do it, but they would not come off.

He stood and began looking around. He passed people, people who swerved out of his way.

Soon he passed a puddle and saw why they were afraid of him.

The blue colour of his hair made him want to hide it in the same way that the echo of a name which he couldn't quite make out made him want to tear off his ears.

He didn't know what that reason was and didn't care.

Mayuri began smearing mud onto his face. It was brown. Not dark enough.

He wanted it to be black.

He wrung his hands and found the feeling of it odd. Something about his middle finger. He felt, almost as if in compensation for something, that it should be longer.

But it was his eyes that disturbed him the most.

They seemed to glow like suns in his face.

And he was terribly and perhaps illogically afraid of what would happen if those suns went out.

Rumours of a frightening man dressed in odd attire reached the ears of another man, a Captain. He ignored these at first. Then he heard reports of the man's intelligence, one who pursued knowledge with a kind of insanity, and he was intrigued.

This man was Kisuke Urahara.

One day the echoes got worse than ever. Mayuri tossed and turned as he tried to sleep. He had tried to recall the name many, many times, but it had always failed. He seized his ears, trying to pull them off, the make the noise stop.

What was that name?

He could not remember it.

And a part of him did not want to.

He reached for the knife he used in his dissections and cut both ears off.

As he screeched, Urahara found him.

He was never bothered by the echoes again.

Urahara made new ears for him, ones which didn't make him hear half-remembered echoes. He gave him a home, a room. Mayuri knew he was expected to stay in it. He did not care.

He was given everything he asked for.

He did not request for overly controversial objects of study, like certain people, even thought he wanted them. This was partly because he enjoyed the endless study this new life gave him and partly because he respected and even, though he would never admit it, liked Urahara too much for him to endanger it with his odd requests.

He liked the way Urahara came to him when he could not find an answer.

For the first time his his known life he was useful and it sparked off something which had been crushed down long, long ago.

The Urahara left.

And Mayuri took over.

And he could do what ever he wanted.

Which compensated for the fact that he felt like he had lost something with Urahara's departure.

He began to experiment.

But a feeling nagged at him.

It followed him everywhere.

It stalked him constantly.

_He felt like he was missing something._

But he did not know what.

And, with his more ruthless experiments, he sometimes heard a flicker of a voice. That of a little girl.

He never knew where it came from.

He just wanted it to stop.

Most of the time he ignored it and got on with his experiments.

But sometimes, in the privacy of his chamber, he would ask the voice who it was.

It never answered.

And sometimes.

Some rare times.

He cried.

Mayuri's experiments had ventured more and more towards the extreme. He had, lately, become interested in machines and would test them on unsuspecting people. He had been told to stop but refused to, as he could normally revive the people. He found he was extremely talented in medical matters.

He was especially interested in machines of death.

It was almost as if a buried talent had worked it's way up through the years and come up twisted. For a short time he had become interested in machines of life and had even created a few that prolonged life when the liver was on the brink of death.

It was like something inside perceived the future and prepared for it.

The machine he was working on on that day was one which killed with a poisonous gas. He had already given himself the antidote so it would not affect him and had gone to test it in an abandoned stable a little way away from the street.

He thought it a safe enough place.

He thought wrong.

A woman who had long been looking for someone was walking down the street. She was nice to everyone she met, but in a distant kind of way that said her thoughts were elsewhere.

They had been elsewhere ever since she had awoken.

Suddenly something tugged her off the path.

It was not a visible or material thing.

It was like an invisible string linking her to someone.

Someone she had been looking for for a long, long time.

Feeling a cautious hope, she ventured off the path.

In the stables, Mayuri began the machine.

_Now, to see if it works,_ he thought, ignoring the childish, female voice in the back of his head which cried that he stop.

The woman walked towards a stable.

He waited for the machine to start.

She opened the doors and knew instantly that she had found him. She cried out in happiness.

He felt a curious peace as he looked at the woman and a rush of something warmer as he recognised her voice as the mature version of the child's one which whispered things at the back of his head.

She looked around at a hissing sound. A gas had begun to squirt from an odd machine.

The warm feeling changed to fear.

He turned the death machine off but if was too late.

He was too good at what he did.

The gas began to kill her as he watched.

The woman could feel something was wrong.

Her legs collapsed under her.

Darkness came.

But she did not want it to come!

Mayuri acted instantly.

He used the same stable to store several of his machines, including the life-prolonging ones. But only one of them would work.

Mayuri was very good at what he did. The poison would kill off every little part of the woman. Not even her Spirit-particles would be salvageable.

But the core would be untouched.

Not questioning why he needed to save her, just knowing that he did, Mayuri saved the woman's soul and left her body to die.

But he could not leave it like that.

A woman awoke.

She felt a moment of Deja-vu.

Hadn't she done this before.

She felt a moment of anxiety, but then her gaze fell upon an odd-looking man who she felt that she could not live without and she was calm.

"My name is Mayuri Kurosutchi," he told her in a grating voice. "I am your Captain."

"Hello," said the woman.

"And yours is Nemu."

"Yes, Captain," she agreed respectfully.

Mayuri looked at her. He didn't know why but he felt a hate for her.

As if he blamed her for something.

Something which she could not help.

"Don't just lie there," he snapped.

"Yes, Captain," she conceded, getting up. She felt a moment of dizziness but it cleared up.

Nemu would be fine.

Mayuri felt a moment of anxiety for her when she swayed. When he saw her stand straight he was relieved, then angry at her for making him worry. Even so, he felt a spark of something warmer for her. Something he wanted to deny.

Anger and hate was safer than warmth.

He snapped at her that she would be his Lieutenant now. She thanked him softly, feeling a little sad that she had done something to make him angry.

They walked out of the stable together.

From then on, the Captain's experiments were that little bit less tortuous. That little bit less horrifying.

He never heard the child's voice again.

The path was twisted but it was the one they walked now.

And they walked it together.


	8. From Rotting Wood, Flowers Grow

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach

**Author's Note**: AU (Alternate universe)

**Before I Died**

**From Rotting Wood, Flowers Grow**

Once, there was a wealthy family. It had become aristocratic through hard labour over generations. It had long been involved in the growth and processing of bamboo and other wood. This way, they had become rich, and powerful. But the line began to dwindle. A curse took the family, rotting their line from the inside out, as each line somehow betrayed the family, marrying out, or letting their temper get the better of them. The family temper was legendary; a fury which would descend at random intervals, infiltrating events, poisoning gatherings. Soon, there was only one line left. A father and his son. The father had only survived to old age by adhering to a strict set of self-imposed familial laws, and he intended for his son to do the same.

However, the son showed no such desire to restrain his furious impulses. He would descend into rages at the slightest provocation, and there was nothing the father could do or say that would stop him. More than that, the boy showed no interest in the family business, the long-upheld tradition of growing and manufacturing wood, being the main source of employment for the surrounding villages. The father was intensely loyal to both the family laws and business. The son was loyal to neither.

For some reason, he insisted on spending time with his father, sparring and the like, instead of doing his lessons, learning about the family history and business. He loved his father, it was clear. The father had replaced love with loyalty to law and wood. But, no matter how he tried, he could never bring his son to do the same. On top of that, he could never bring himself to beat the boy.

The family estate was surrounded by trees. These trees were glorious in colour, a kind of speciality that they grew, not for the wood, but for the foliage and flowers. These trees were tended by an army of gardeners, but they weren't allowed within the family's inner sanctuary. He, himself, had long tended to the trees, but he was getting old. He had to allow someone in, especially since there was a new disease which affected plants, rotting them from the inside, a fungus which could also kill humans if it went unchecked.

He asked the head gardener who the best choice would have been, but the man showed him nothing but row upon row of experienced gardeners with greedy eyes, wanting to better themselves. He wanted someone pure of heart, who wouldn't corrupt his precious trees. Then he saw her.

It was a young girl, delicately pruning one of the trees. There was such an air of care in the way she snipped the dead leaves, leaving the live ones, that he had to go up to the tree which she had climbed. "Tell me, child, do you care for the plants?"

"Yes, sir," she said without looking down. "But, please, don't distract me."

The girl's dedication, that she wouldn't see who was speaking to her, that she wouldn't let him disrupt her work, convinced him that he had found the one.

So the girl was employed as his gardener, and the trees remained healthy and vibrant and beautiful. But there was still the question of his son…

The girl had only recently become the gardener, had only recently learned the rules. Number One: she must care for the trees and flowers like they were her own children. Number Two: she was allowed the live in the servant's quarters and take what she needed, but would obey the rest of the household staff. Number Three; she must never, ever speak to the man unless he summoned her, and never talk to his son.

The father had given reason for the first two rules, and she would obey them meticulously in any case. But the third he had told her with no reason. Even so, she would obey those rules.

She was up, high in the tree, delicately pruning them with the care and skill of someone her senior, when a voice made her start. "Who is that?" Someone shouted from below her. They began shaking the tree furiously, and she could do nothing but fall.

Shaken, she looked up at her assailant. A boy stood before her, surprise written across his face, replacing deep lines of fury. "You're a… A girl."

She nodded, striving for calm. "I'm the new gardener."

"Oh… Well, I thought you were an intruder. My father didn't tell me anything." Angrily, the boy stalked a little way away, kicking a stump. The girl took a breath to reprimand him, and he looked sharply at her. She stopped, then realised.

"You're the son of…" She turned and fled.

"Hey! Where are you going?" The boy ran after her, furiously bringing her around to face him. "Why did you run like that?"

"I'm not allowed to talk to you," she confessed, trembling slightly. "It's against the rules."

The boy snorted. "Rules… Where did they ever get anybody?"

"But, your father-"

"I know, my father obeys them. He loves them more than…" Abruptly, he broke off. Something in the girl made him stop, hesitate.

"More than he loves you?" she offered softly. He snarled at her angrily, baring his teeth, his hand going to his knife. For once, she didn't flinch away, just looked at him with gentle, calming eyes. "If you have something buried deep inside, something which is making you angry, please say it. Or it'll be like the disease which rots the wood. It will eat you up on the inside."

"I don't need to talk to you." With this, the boy turned and walked away, anger clear in the set of his shoulders. The girl stayed where she was for a moment, her eyes following him, before she went back to her duty.

The boy had lied, and he knew it. The next day, he returned to the place he had seen the girl. She was there again, caring for the plants. She looked to be about his age, just entering the phase between child and adult. "I hate being aristocratic. It must be so easy, being a commoner, like you."

She looked at him, startled again, and smiled slightly. "At least you didn't make me fall out of the tree, this time."

The boy suppressed a flicker of humour. "Well, is it?"

"Easier? No, I don't think so." The girl went back to caring for the trees as she spoke. "You never must worry about where your next meal comes from. You have no need to work for a living. You are allowed to be as angry as you like, because nobody can harm you."

"Stop gardening, just talk to me," he snapped at her.

"And you can order people not to do their jobs, just to stop and cater to your needs," the girl continued, stopping what she was doing, but not being angry about it. "And I have to do it. Because those are the rules."

The boy's eyes widened. "_No_," he shouted. "You don't! If you don't want to do something, then don't do it!"

"I have to," she told him calmly. "You ordered me to."

"I… Stop making me talk up to you. I won't look up to someone like you. I won't. Get down here!"

"You just said I don't have to obey," she reminded him softly, looking down like a gentle queen, despite the fact that she was nothing but a commoner. "And I'd rather not, right now. I'm afraid you would do something to me."

"No! I won't ever hurt you!" he shouted. Realising what he said, he clapped a hand over his mouth, staring in horror. Without another word he ran off.

For some days, he didn't come. When he came next, it was without the fury which he usually carried like a cloak. He stood straighter than normal, and this time the girl began the conversation. "You look better today."

He blinked up at her, somewhat confused. "I dress like this all the time."

"I mean you aren't angry. Maybe because you are a part of the aristocracy, or because it is a natural part of who you are, you have a dignity that most people don't possess." She sent him a small grin. "When you aren't shouting, of course."

The boy looked away, unable to meet her eyes. "I'm not dignified. My father is always saying that dignity comes from obeying the laws set down by your elders. I don't do that, so I don't have dignity. You… You're different."

The girl laughed at this as she threw down a blossom, one which landed softly on his head, surprising him. "Don't be silly."

For the first time since she had met him, the boy smiled.

Over the next few years, the two grew together, entering that strange half-adult stage which all must go through. Over time, the dignity which the girl had seen grew with her influence, her charity, her tranquillity. And, in both, grew a kind of love, childish, but pure.

The father occasionally inquired about the girl, though he never bothered to look for her. When he spoke to his head gardener, he would ask about her as well, and so kept up an interest. All seemed to be going well, or better, in any case. The boy still had fits of fury. But, for some reason, lately he had taken a more dignified approach to things. He obeyed none of the familia laws, still didn't respect the business, but the father was confidant that, too, would change with time.

The father never noticed how love blossomed between his son and the girl. He didn't see that, as both matured, and new desires overcame them, they began interacting differently. He never bothered to check.

The boy had no regard for rules, and the girl loved him. He found her the most beautiful person in the world. She thought of him every minute of the day. Soon, their relationship advanced past childish love, even though they were both younger than it normally happened. It was somewhat after they had begun to love each other in all senses of the word when the girl found she was pregnant.

The two of them contrived ways to hide it from all. The girls wore looser clothing, and hid herself from strangers. She was always seen up to trees. The boy spoke to the head gardener, made him swear not to tell. He cared for the girl sometimes, when she was ill.

After a while the child was born, a small child which grew quickly, going from a scrawny infant to a chubby baby with a patch of brightly coloured hair. The child was cared for by all the gardeners, raised in a loving home. And, of course, the boy, who, despite the fact that he was a father, wasn't mature enough to be called a man, cared for him sometimes, teaching his son the value of loyalty to people. His mother, still a girl, taught him the value of rules by teaching him how to remain hidden from his grandfather. He grew into a toddler, but even then exhibited the signs of the famous family temperament.

Then it all began going wrong.

For the father, now grandfather, the disease had been growing in his bamboo fields, a strange phenomena which spread the rotting wood. There were reports of human deaths, too. On top of that, he hadn't seen his son in a while. Feeling melancholy, he realised that he hadn't checked in on the girl he'd employed all those years ago for a while, and he hadn't seen her since then. He wondered if the girl had grown. She had followed his rules impeccably, never interacting with him or, he presumed, with his son. And the trees had been growing gloriously.

For the first time in years he ventured into the strip of garden which surrounded the house. He admired the trees as they grew, wondering where the girl was. Then he heard her. And another voice, that of a child. He paused. Surely not... Surely the sweet child from years ago hadn't gone so far as to take a grubby child into his private garden?

Pushing down the curling fingers of anger which threatened to grip his heart, he strode forward, forward until he found what he was looking for.

Before him, his son leant against the tree, talking to two people that climbed it. One was the girl. Another was a child, a toddler no more than two years of age, being held by the girl as she climbed. His eyes fixed upon the child in horror. His family had two hair colours, the first a uniform black, as he and his son had. The second was that colour –a vibrant red.

"You…" He muttered, the first word he had said to the girl in years. Two startled faces turned to him. The toddler began to wail. "You sired a bastard child… How _dare_ you."

"Father, don't-" his son began, stepping towards him. But the father's anger had already turned to the girl. For years it had been controlled, repressed. But, now, he let it free. He began shouting. The girl was nothing but a whore, a seductive temptress which he hadn't seen, which she had masked with loving eyes and a carrying nature. How could he let her pollute his plants? He saw what the rot was now; the rot was what happened when you ventured from the rules. The rot was the girl. The rot was his son. The rot was the bastard child.

He drew his sword and marched forward. But the boy came in his way. No matter. He was no longer an aristocrat. He was no longer his son. Now, he was rot. And he would be cut down.

While the woman sobbed, her lover and her lover's father fought. The child screamed in her arms. She could do nothing but watch the battle, watch the swords collide. And watch as the father's blade eventually pierced his own son's heart.

"And now, rot, you shall die," he spat furiously. "As shall your mistress and bastard child. If you had obeyed the rules, this would never have happened and she would live. Now they both will die."

But he had discounted, too early, the legendary anger. This anger made the dying son scream, made him raise his sword and drive it straight through his father's eye, into his brain.

"_You are no father of mine_."

And so the father died instantly.

The boy let go of the sword. The father fell on him, driving his own sword deeper into his son, his body still warm, their blood mingling like so much red water. He could hear screaming, someone begging for him not to die. A child's yells that tugged on his heart like nobody else could. Yet, all he could think was that this was the closest he had ever been to his father.

If he hadn't broken the rules, his father would have lived, and they could have ruled an empire of wood together.

If he hadn't broken the rules, he would have been able to gently bring the girl into their circle, make his father accept her, before taking her as his bride.

If he hadn't been so angry… he if had just obeyed the laws…

And so he died.

There was nothing more for the girl to do but leave. She knew she would be blamed should she be found, and she had more than her won life to look out for. If it had been just her, she would have stayed. She would have died beside him. But she had one crying child. And, unbeknownst to her lover, another on the way. She never even got the chance to tell him. He would have been happy. But not now. Not ever again.

So she fled, like the cur she felt she was, fled to the furthest she could think of. The head gardener, sympathising with her, sent her to a bamboo farm which provided bamboo for the family. She worked there, accepted readily though she was a single, pregnant mother, because all the other workers had left. There was a disease in the bamboo stalks which killed it off, and all those who would harvest those stiff growths. She knew what the disease was. It was law-breakers like herself. It was those who would never follow the rules. But she couldn't help it. All she had done was love.

Her son worked alongside her, or tried. Mostly, she ended up leaving him in a small basket. But it was a mistake. The bamboo disease got to him first. She found him still, cool, on the small, woven mattress. He had been a headstrong boy, emotional, loving, loyal, and he had been so excited to meet his new sister or brother. Now she would never find out which it was. It was her fault, again.

This should have been her disease. It should have been her, and only her, that died. If not for the life within her, the last remnant of her lover, she would have taken that small, insignificant thing and be done with it. But she had one thing to live for.

Eventually, she was the last and only worker. By this time, the soldiers came to burn the entire bamboo farm. They had done this to all the other infected places. That was the last.

The girl, for that was what she still was, despite all of her troubles, never learned this. She had taken to sleeping inside the bamboo farm, under the stars. When she shut her eyes, she pretended she was in the dark room, having snuck into the house, with her lover, that boy who never got to be the man that he could have been. Handsome, strong, dignified, all that was hidden by darkness. He was like a dream, one who had chosen her. She imagined his caresses. His laughter. His child growing within her. His child forcing its way out of her body. She woke, not noticing the smell of burning. All she could notice was an immense pain, all she could feel was agony. She closed her eyes and pushed, It had been the same with her small boy, the one she had killed with her own neglect. But she would endure this pain, this agony, just to have a small bit of her lover back. Just to have a reason to keep on living.

_Please, give me a reason to live_, she begged, screaming her agony to the stars above. _Don't let me die like this_.

When the agony had come and gone, and come and gone again, and come and gone a final time, this time so intense that she felt like her organs were trying to eat themselves out of her, it was finished, and all that was left was a dull ache. She paused to catch her breathe. After all the agony, she would finally have something. A precious bundle to care for. To take, far from here, and teach how to be better than she could ever be. Someone to care for. After the years of solitude, being sold by her family for money they needed more than a child. After caring only for plants, because plants would never betray her. After being found by a gentleman, then by a lover, then losing both of them tragically. Having her heart torn open. After losing a child. She just needed something to live for.

She looked down. At first, she only saw the blood. It had been the same in her first child's birth. She waited to see the small, wriggling body. She saw the body. But it wasn't moving. With trembling hands she reached forward and touched the small body. It was nothing more. The child had been born stillborn.

"Why?" the girl whispered, looking at the small child. A still-functioning part of her mind noticed that the child was a girl. She would have had a daughter. "Why?" This was louder. "_Why couldn't you give me anything to live for_?" This was the loudest the girl had ever screamed, the most despairing. It was because never, never had she wanted to die more than then. And then the answer to her question came.

_Because you are going to die._

She realised that she was surrounded by flames. They flickered along the bamboo, killing off the disease, killing off what she knew was her own fault. The smoke was heavy in the air as she began to cough. The flames intruded closer. The girl clutched the body, never filled with life in the first place, to her heart. When she could breath, she screamed. At first she yelled that she was there, that someone was there. That they were burning her alive. But, if they heard, the arsonists didn't care. Then she just screamed with agony.

The last thought she had was of a crystal-clear image. The first time she had seen him. They had both been just children. They had never stopped being just children. Even so, they had had them, and they had died too. But those thoughts drifted away, until all she could think of was the thing which had started all of this off. A simple love. A simple flower, on a tree, dropped onto a boy's head. An offering.

The last thing she thought of was the Sakura petals drifting on the wind.

Byakuya opened his eyes. His hand immediately fled to his chest, but there was no liquid. No injury. Why had he thought there would be?

"Are you awake?"

Byakuya turned his face to the speaker. It was an old man. "Yes."

"You have just come into the Kuchiki clan. I am your grandfather. The first thing you do will be to learn the laws that govern us."

Byakuya nodded solemnly. "Laws are the most important thing." He sat up, helped by the man. He waved him off, dragging himself up with a kind of iron dignity. "Did you say I am a part of the Kuchiki clan?"

"That is correct."

A flicker of anger curled in his gut, but he pushed it away. "Clan of the rotting wood. How appropriate."

He could never explain this remark, not even to himself.

Renji Abara started, coughing as he came to. There was nobody to greet him. For some reason, he thought there would be.

Hisana awoke, clutching, to her chest, a small body. Before she noticed anything, she noticed that this body was wriggling slightly. She took the child and looked at it closely. It lived.

"I have a reason," she whispered into the baby's forehead. "I have a reason to keep living. A light to guide me. I name you, Rukia."

"Are you alright, dear?" asked an old man, a little way away. Hisana looked at him. He seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place where from.

"I… I think so."

"Is that your sister?" he asked her curiously.

"I…" She swallowed, thinking. There was a person. Someone who… But… No. There was nobody. Therefore, the baby could not be her actual child. "Yes, yes she is."

"Just woken up, have you?"

"How did you…"

"I only woke a little while ago myself. Please, will you come help me trim the cherry blossoms? The Sakura petals are positively raining this year…"

At first, Byakuya's temper had the habit of getting the better of him. But he learned, with strict diligence, that the rules were meant to be kept. Without rules, strict laws, people died. The lesson had been ingrained, even if he couldn't remember where it had come from.

Byakuya's strength beared him through the training, the harsh lifestyle, of the powerful Kuchiki family. He was powerful, intelligent, and strict on his fellow family members, not tolerating the slightest divergence from the laws. Even so, he always felt as though he was missing something. Whenever he felt like this, he took a walk through the family's garden, in particular through the part which grew the Sakura trees. These always soothed the pain, just a little.

One day, he found an old man there. This man was a gardener, and Byakuya saw him occasionally, watching him with sad eyes. This time, the man went so far as to walk up to Byakuya and say to him, "may I make a recommendation, sir? The Sakuras are particularly beautiful over that bridge, today."

Byakuya looked at this man coldly, not deigning to reply, as he shuffled off. Not knowing why, he followed his advice, and never saw the man again.

Hisana hated herself. She had abandoned her younger sister after only a short time, after seeing her grow just a little. She wanted to see the child blossom, but she couldn't. She found herself waning. And when she tried to properly care for herself, she found that the baby suffered. Rukia. Her reason for living. Hisana was too dependant; she couldn't _be_ a single mother. Though she had tried. And, upon failing, she had run.

The old, kindly man who had been there when she woke had found her and directed her to the garden which they worked at. When she asked him why, he said that she would see, and that he was atoning for something he felt he had done a long, long time ago, that sometimes, the rules had to be broken. He muttered like this often, but she never got the chance to ask where it came from, because she never saw him again.

So he had left her in the cherry blossoms, the sakura petals surrounding her. Then a voice had asked, "who are you?"

She started, standing, and whirling around. For a moment, she felt dizzy, ill. She had to be seriously sick. That was the only explanation for the sudden euphoria, love that rushed through her, then flickered out.

The man pressed a hand to his chest, and the movement made both of them wince. He paused, regaining his dignity. "Do I know you?"

She shook her head, muted.

"Are you… Alright?"

Why was he asking these questions? Why did he feel the need to care for this woman he found?

Again, she shook her head.

"Do you need a place to stay?"

"I do. That's why I'm here. I'm sorry to have interrupted your walk, but I…"

He held up a hand, stopping her. "You may stay here, in the house of the rotting wood." Why had he called it that, which he hadn't done in such a long time? So many questions, not one with an answer.

But, soon, their meeting had been forgotten. He found himself seeking her out. She found herself wanting him to. Soon, they fell in love. And this time, they married, breaking the rules for each other, as they had done in another time, another place. The girl felt a deep sense of guilt that she had abandoned her sister and, now she had support, tried to seek her out again. But she never found her, never managed to know that child which she had so long-ago abandoned.

Rukia had grown strong and fast. She had a temper, but was smart enough to know when not to use it. However, she had a disturbing habit of breaking rules that should have remained unbroken, a trait passed down from the sister she had never known.

Renji grew up the same way. Angry, but powerful. Unsurprisingly, they found each other. They never knew that they had once been siblings. Just that they trusted each other. And, though they would rather eat snails than admit it (or make someone else eat snails), they loved each other. They decided that, together, they would be stronger, so nobody would ever have to care for them, though this wasn't the reason they stated. It was a reason both of them felt deep inside. Nobody could ever die to save them. Not again. Not ever.

Hisana knew she was sick. It was her, rotting from the inside, her just deserts from long ago. Her beloved Byakuya didn't see it this way, but she knew he wouldn't. She tried to make her passing as easy as she could for him, but eventually there was nothing she could do. She was dying, almost dead.

_Thankyou, Byakuya, for giving me a reason to live. Thankyou, Rukia, my little ray of light. _

And so Hisana died.

And so Byakuya once more broke those laws he had sworn to uphold. He found Rukia. She was strong, capable, a good fighter, angry, but trainable. She grew to made him proud. He also found a Lieutenant, someone who shared the same traits. It felt right, having them both near. Like a complete family. Well, a family as complete as it could be.

In the house of the rotting wood, the firm beams of laws cracked, and from these, they made sakura flowers grow. From these broken laws came love.


	9. The Bleached, White Waters

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach

**Before I Died**

**The Bleached-White Waters**

Two people sat around a fire during the late hours of the night, a man and a woman. The fire trailed smoke upwards. They sat sharing a flask of drink, surrounded by people, all shooting them malevolent looks. Theirs wasn't the only fire going but, for some reason, they were ostracised by those surrounding them. Nobody came near.

A man came, walking around. With him was a girl carrying bread and a small boy carrying bowls. As he walked, the boy would fill the bowls with soup and give them to hungry people. The girl would hand out hunks of bread.

"Hey," called the man. The three ignored him deliberately. "_Hey, over here! Give me some damn food_!"

Trying to avoid the commotion, the man grudgingly came over, the frightened children giving them food. They gave some to the woman, too, who watched with weary eyes. The man noticed how she watched and snapped, "what? People just don't listen unless you shout."

"Whatever," she growled, watching him dunk the bread and leave it in. "You aren't doing it right. It'll get soggy if you do that."

"What if I want it like that?" he snapped. She just scowled. "Why did you do that, before?"

"Do what?" asked the woman, knowing full well what he meant.

"You know what I mean."

The woman stayed silent. After a long moment she began. "Let me tell you a story about a princess."

Once, there was a princess, renown throughout the entire kingdom for her beauty and generosity. She was only known by rumour, for she was never allowed out of her castle. Really, her beauty may have been a complete fabrication, because of this. But her generosity was real. This was certain, for the girl had long ago given herself to the moon. It was a custom in her tribe. Every half a century, a single girl had to volunteer, as a child, to be given to the moon. The moon was seen as their goddess, a healer of their wounds. Without the moon to heal them, they would die. Or so legend said.

Every fifty years, a child had volunteered. These girls were called Moon-blessed, princesses unlike other people. For an entire year they had to be kept away from human contact, allowing only a single parent to care for them, to be purified for the light of the moon.

And so, the princess was kept in her castle, her mother and father honoured by her sacrifice. She prepared herself for a year of desperate solitude, with only her mother to contact her.

As befitting a princess, she was given the best of clothes. Every day her mother would do her hair, dress her in simple yet elegant clothes, keeping her pure with the water from a nearby stream. She was fed the best of food, rich delicacies of her people.

But the girl had a friend, a small, scruffy girl, who had been her companion since she was born. She had always been the calmer of the two, for her younger girl was always easily angered, irrational. She would vanish for weeks, even months on end, and then demand all of her time and energy. But when she came, the two would have such adventures that all the time apart was forgiven. They would be a dangerous pair, the younger ruffian always hurting herself and sometimes others, and the calmer girl always healing them. It was with the girl's guidance that she saw all the pain of her people as the half-century drew closer, as people became nervous that no young girl would volunteer this time, that they would all die in pain and agony.

So, one night, under a full moon, the girl looked up and made a promise, both to herself and the other. Though she wouldn't realise it for some time, the rougher girl hadn't been paying attention. The promise was only noticed by the one who made it.

The younger had been gone for almost a year when the princess went into exile. She did so, knowing that she would never see her young friend again with a kind of heavy sorrow, belied only by the fact that her sacrifice would protect her friend, too, from harm.

That is, until she lay quietly in meditation one evening, a small, familiar voice came to her. "What have you done _now_?"

Started from her complete tranquillity, the princess looked about herself. Thinking, she stood and looked out of the window. Like she thought, her friend had fearlessly scaled the vines outside the window and was hanging there now, looking up at her with an angry expression.

"What are you doing?" asked the princess, without anger. She had found that the nights of meditation had completely eliminated anger from her heart. It was a good thing. The moon could not be angry.

The other girl climbed the rest of the way inside, flopped onto the ground. "Nice to see you, too. For your information, I came to stop you making a dumb mistake. Now come on, before they notice." She stood, grabbed the hand of the princess and tried to drag her out of the window. The princess refused, retreating, looking at her hand.

"Your hand is wet."

"I just swam across the lake." The castle overlooked a lake.

Wiping her hand, the princess shook her head. "I'm not coming. I'm Moon-blessed now."

"Yeah, I can see that, and I think you're stupid for it. Why the _hell_ did you volunteer for that thing?"

"'That thing' happens to be a long-held tradition of our people," the princess pointed out coldly. "And you know my reasons for volunteering."

"No," the other denied vehemently. "Well, I know you hate seeing people hurt, but this? You know what you have to do, right? You know the ceremony?"

"Of course," the princess muttered, trying to push down her rising frustration. "But that is besides the point. You must go, or else you will be caught, and killed for speaking to me like this."

For a long moment the rougher girl looked at the princess, scowling. "Well, I can see that I can't change your mind tonight… And, besides, I'm a fisherman now."

"But you're a woman!" exclaimed the princess.

The other winked. "They don't' know that. They'll get suspicious if I'm away too long. But I'll be back. I'm going to change your mind!"

With that, the other girl took to the window, climbing down the vines without elegance or subtlety, seizing the vines and dragging herself down, throwing herself into the water and swimming away.

The princess sighed. At least she had seen her friend again. But she was disturbed, unsure if she wanted the girl back for the next night, or if she feared it.

Despite this conflict, the next day came and went until it was night once more. Like she had promised, the girl came, squeezing out her short hair. "Okay, so I have a boat ready any time, supplies or anything. We can run away now, and nobody will know."

"I can't run away."

"Look, you're beginning to annoy me-"

"I wouldn't want that to happen," snapped the princess, sarcasm clear in her tone.

"Why don't you want to leave?"

"You know my reasons."

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking now would I?"

The princess stared at her. "You're telling me you don't remember the promise I made?"

"What promise?"

The princess shook her head in disgust and would speak to the other no more. She left again, determined to make the self-made princess see her troubles. She couldn't return for a few nights, but eventually came to find her friend looking up to the moon with peacefully closed eyes. A small frown line appeared between them when her shadow fell across them. She opened them. At first they were filled with a kind of tranquillity. Upon seeing her, they filled with exasperation. The girl wondered if she was a bad person for liking that she had done that. She then decided that she didn't really care.

"I thought you were gone for good," the princess stated.

"Hell, no," the girl snorted, hiding, with her flippant tone, how the remark cut her. There had been no hope, no misery, no grievance that they may have never seen each other again. "So, this promise you told me about?"

The princess wouldn't answer. She asked again, but still no answer came. So, instead, she changed the subject. "So, how's the old hag?"

This startled the other girl. "Who?"

She shook her head in disgust. "I can't believe you forgot. Your mother, stupid. She's the one who pushed you into this, isn't she?" The sudden hope which surged in her was almost painful.

"No, she didn't even mention it to me," the other muttered coldly. "And I would never call her an old hag."

The painful hope became agonising as it was shot down. The princess was tearing apart the raggedy girl's heart with each haughty word. The pain made her bitter. "You liar. You always did."

"That was you. You just assumed I agreed with you, but I never did."

"Your mother was always an old hag, and you can't tell me you never thought so!" she barked.

"No, I always knew she just wanted what was right for me. You always just assumed I thought the same as you with everything. Well, you know what?" The princess's tranquillity had been shattered into as many pieces as the other girl's heart. "Never. Every time you tried to make me run away, I cried, and you called me a baby because of it. Every time I tried to help someone, you tried to pull me away because you thought you would get into trouble. You don't care about anyone but yourself!" The girl was shouting now, and the raggedy girl was struck silent. Never had the other lost her temper. Never had she shouted. Never had she once shown anything but affection.

"All the time you just thought I was a possession, didn't you?" The realisations came fast and hit the princess's heart hard. "My god, that's why you always left! You never cared about me as a person- I was a toy to play with when you got bored of whatever adventure you'd go on, leaving me behind." The tears came now, as she expected them. They came from the princess's heart as she realised all her treasured memories, the ones which she'd played over and over again, comforting herself, were false. The ones she'd relived in her mind's eye when the loneliness got too unbearable. They were nothing but the result of one selfish little girl. They were all false. "And now, now your little toy is slipping out of your reach, and you don't want her to go. Well, I'm telling you now- go."

The ragged fisherwoman stared at the sobbing princess. She felt hollow. She… She thought that she's just been a toy? That had never been the case. She got bored, yeah, but didn't everyone? That didn't mean she was heartless, did it?

Or, it hadn't. But her heart was gone now. And now, she was empty.

"Go," shouted the princess.

"Fine," replied the other, going back down the tower, hurrying. Damned if she let that stuck-up princess see her cry.

The princess knelt on her floor and cried. She cried for the years she thought were real, but had really just been the result of one girl's games. And, as she sobbed, she put into words the thing which was most painful. "I'm doing this for you. You were hurt, and I couldn't heal you. Your leg was scarred forever. And I swore then I'd do everything I could to always make you better. And it was never real. It's all for nothing."

The next day, she waited for her mother to bring her food. It was rich meal. The food had been wonderful at first, far better than anything she'd eaten. But now, because it was so rich, they only let her have so little, and she had long grown sick of the taste. So she was both hungry and sick of food all the time. She talked with her mother for some time before telling her, "mother, do you remember my…" She was no longer a friend. "The girl I knew."

"The one you always used to play with?" her mother replied.

"What would you do if I told you that I missed her?"

"I would tell you that it didn't matter; you can only see me now."

"And she missed me."

"How would you know such a thing?" Her mother's eyes shot sharply to her daughter's face. The other's eyes rose directly to meet hers.

"Because she told me."

Instantly, the mother stood. "And you didn't tell me!"

"It was only last night!" the princess quickly lied, preying that the moon goddess would forgive her. "But I can not have her spoiling my peace of mind." It was then that she told of the rougher girl's deception, how she clothed herself in fisherman's dress and went out amongst the men.

Sure enough, the childhood friend of the princess was seized and brought before the mother. She looked upon the child with a haughty look as she was thrown before her. "You have been staining the honour of the princess."

"She's no princess! She's just full of herself, probably because the lot of you won't stop pumping her with hot air!" shouted the girl. She was promptly slapped by the mother of the princess.

"Don't speak of her like that," the woman hissed scathingly. "You always were a bad influence. A blight on my daughter. Now she has given herself to the moon goddess. Now she has brought honour on the entire village, and good health. It is because of her that we will remain whole and healthy. But, you? I would love to kill you. I would love to take away the blight you have put on my daughter's heart by sacrifice. Instead, I will let you go, for one reason."

That night, the raggedy girl left. Her heart was broken. Her childhood friend had abandoned her. She had nothing. She was sore from the beating she'd gotten. She was exhausted, more than just physically. So she went to the nearest barn she could find, pushed inside and collapsed on the ground. She'd slept in barns before and had never minded. So why did she suddenly feel the urge to cry?

"What the hell are you doing there?"

Startled, the raggedy girl straightened, looked around. Nearby was a man, looking at her with a kind of disgust. "What?"

"This is my barn, get out!"

"Oh, yeah!" She replied. "I know how to deal with people like you! If you want this barn, come here and take it form me!"

For a moment, the man looked at her in complete surprise. "Huh… Nobody's ever said that before… Whoa re you, anyway?"

"Nobody," spat the girl. "Who are you?"

"None of your business." For a long moment, they glared at each other before the man said, "I stay on this side, you stay on that side. Now shut up and let me sleep."

"You started this."

"And now I'm finishing it."

And so started a strange kind of friendship. The man had grown up in a family where all they had done was shout at each other, competing for love, food, attention, everything. The girl had shouted because she was angry at the world for abandoning her, for leaving her with the feeling that she was constantly falling, even when she had stood still. Being with the princess had stopped that feeling, but now it returned. Except when she fought. So she fought constantly. With everyone, for everything. And she was gearing up for the biggest fight of all. Because, even though the stuck-up moron had abandoned her, the girl wouldn't abandon the princess. Some remnant of loyalty lingered on.

Finally, after months, the day of the sacrifice approached. The event happened only twice per century, and every single person in the village would come to celebrate and mourn collectively. They all came to build fires for the night, lit them as it got darker. The girl hadn't told her new friend much of what happened. But they had grown close, and he was always up for something which would rile people up. "The entire village? Even better," was his response to her warning.

It was night. The moon was full. They'd planned the night specifically to fall on a date where it would be. The princess had long hair, and she looked even paler in the sun, serene, dressed completely in white. First, she would be filled with "enough food to last her for all of the next life", as the priest of the village said as they filled her with rich foods, forcing it down when she said she couldn't eat. The girl had to look away when they wouldn't stop, even when the princess almost threw up.

Afterwards, the princess's hair had to be shaved off, completely, "to give her modesty instead of vanity." And so her beautiful locks were all lopped off.

The girl felt bad for deciding to wait it out. She could see the pain on her friend's face, though she was sure nobody else could. It was there, in her eyes. Under the tranquillity. She'd tried to bury it. It was only when they prepared to cast her into the lake, arms tied down, to die by drowning in the moon's reflection, did the girl step forward.

"Stop," she shouted as loud as she could. Immediately, the thousands gathered around in complete silence looked at her, glaring. The man beside her chuckled slightly.

"Not bad," he muttered. "Though I could have shouted louder."

The girl ignored him as she strode forward, and he at her side. "This ceremony can't be allowed to continue. The princess isn't pure. Her family isn't pure, and neither is she."

Instead of pain, a fury rose up. The girl was glad to see it. Around them, mutterings had begun.

"It's true," called the girl's friend, unsure if it was, but glad for the chance to stir some people up.

"Get this whore away from the ceremony," shouted the princess's mother.

"Takes one to know one," the other sang. She turned to the rest of the crowd. "First of all, she isn't pure. I know because I've been talking to her for months now. I've taken away her purity." She said this cockily, like a male hen staking claim on his flock. There were gasps, distraught moans. But they couldn't stop her now. "And the family isn't pure either. The princess's father wasn't the most pious of men. He fathered a bastard child. Pity for him, that bastard child was me."

This time, the gasps came from behind s well. She turned, winked at the princess. "Hello, sister."

"Lies," the princess whispered. "These are all lies."

"They aren't because your own mother told me."

The princess looked at her mother with accusing eyes. "Is this true?"

The woman was silent.

"The ceremony must go on," the priest stated when the mutterings grew, swelled in proportion. "She is still pure, despite her family-"

"And what about her bastard sister talking to her!" shouted somebody.

The priest looked at the sister in question darkly, and the man beside her. "That, we will take care of later."

They began taking the tied-up princess along a pier which jutted out over the ocean, the mother and the priest guiding her, others carrying her.

"Wait!" barked the sister. "Haven't I said enough?"

"Yes," the princess said for the first time. Her voice was cold. Her tone unforgiving. Her back was to the girl. "Yes, you've said enough."

In that moment, the girl realised that she was all alone in her loyalty. Then she vowed that she'd never harbour such a useless thing ever again. Never again. She took one last look at the princess, how the silver light on her head made it looked like she had strands of short, light hair, and turned her back. "Then drown."

She never saw how the princess's shoulders quivered, how there were tears pouring down her face. How, inside, the princess was screaming at the girl, saying how much she still loved her, that, over the months, she'd come to forgive her, and always blame herself. It was all her, the princess's fault. She should have known who to trust, and it wasn't her mother. It was her friend. But then, all she could hope for was that her friend –her sister- would be kept alive by her words.

And so, she was thrown into the water by her mother, her village. Everyone had turned against her. Even the last one she'd held out for had turned against her. The freezing water forced the air from her lungs, made her try to vomit again. But it just added to the water, made a bad taste. She hated rich foods. Food, at all, except maybe the plainest of the plain, like the simple oats she'd eaten so long ago. If it was up to her, she'd never eat again. But it was too late for those thoughts. It was too late to do anything but drown and wish she had done everything differently.

"That's a crap ending," muttered the man.

"Tell me about it."

The man glanced around himself. "Have you noticed anything?"

"Like what?"

"Like everyone around us growing quiet."

The two of them looked around, and it was true. The people were muttering amongst themselves, glancing at them, clandestine. They had also backed away from them further. The priest and the mother of the princess were walking towards them, each carrying a sword.

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this," muttered the girl.

"You both have committed a grievous crime by opposing the ceremony which has kept our tribe healthy for centuries," the priest declared loudly. "You have soiled the purity of the princess. As penance, your sacrifice shall cleanse the blemish and appease the moon-god."

The swords were thrown down in front of them. Suddenly, they noticed that they were surrounded by a ring of fighters, men with swords.

"If you two do not fight, admitting your wrongdoing, then we shall kill both of you."

"You've got to be kidding me," the man stated. "Why the hell…" He trailed off as the woman stepped forward and took up a sword. "What are you doing?"

"You know what I learned today?" she said. "People? You can't depend on them. You can't believe in them. They'll just stab you in the back. So you do it first."

The man seized a sword just as she swung for him, managed to block it. "You've got to be kidding me. You're attacking me? Me? I haven't done anything!"

"But you will."

"This is crazy –why would I? I love you, stupid! Why do you think I've been following you around everywhere! You're the only one who understands."

She swung at him. "I loved her. I thought she understood. I'm doing you a favour."

And so they fought. One strike led to another, and soon even the unwilling man struck with all he had. And as they slowly killed one another, the priest watched and pursed his lips in what was meant to be a smile.

Eventually, they both lay, bleeding from several wounds, unable to move. It was only then that they realised what exactly they had done. "The… The bread…" the girl muttered. "You drugged us with something!"

"But it worked," the priest said calmly as he gestured for someone to take their bodies into the river, so their lifeblood would fuel the health of many.

"I never wanted this to happen," she sobbed.

"Neither did I," muttered the man. "But it did, and we can't undo it."

If the girl could keep speaking, she would have said that, if it ever happened again, she would do it differently. Because, as time went on, she'd come to attach the same desperate affection to the man that she'd attached to the so-called princess. If she could, she would tell him every day. Not in the actual words, because that would be lame. But every time she opened her mouth, every word would be an apology for being such a fool. Every word would be a promise of love.

The man felt tired. He had decided he wanted this woman, and now he was aimless. He supposed it wasn't a problem because he'd be dead in a moment anyway, but still. If he could, he would have tried harder. Been better, so she would notice him. He would love everything she loved. He would be good at everything she was. And, when he was the best, she would notice. The thoughts became more and more disjointed as they were forced into the water, as the water seeped inside of them.

Above them, the water stilled, and the moon's reflection shone bright, its light cast over all.

In the Kotetsu household, Isane was always the more responsible of the two. She was a fantastic healer. It was all she ever wanted to do. She hated seeing people in pain, though she could certainly defend herself if need be. She came to the attention of Captain Unohana as a young girl, and found a kind of mother in the Captain. She would often run to her when she had strange nightmares about food. The Captain was a busy woman, but would, for some reason, listens to the cries of a scared little girl. For that, Isane vowed she would do everything she could for that woman.

Her younger sister Kiyome, on the other hand, was a wildcard. She was fiercely affectionate with some people, dismissive of others. Isane tried to care for Kiyome. She always felt like there was some great wrong she was trying to make up for. Maybe it was that she was more liked, more talented, some said more attractive because of her beautiful silver hair. Isane herself would debate these points in defence of Kiyome. She had her own friends (though Isane never saw them, she was sure they were out there), her own talents and Isane found her hair somewhat disturbing sometimes, though she eventually got used to it.

But, for a long time, she was worried about her. Kiyome had a habit of obsessing over things. She hated, she loved. It wasn't that she was loyal, just… Extremely affectionate. Kiyome seemed to gush a lot about one captain in particular, the one who always got sick. She was happy when Kiyome began training hard so she could work under him.

She was even happier when, one day, she visited Kiyome and found her quarrelling with a young man who quarrelled back with the same intensity, with a glint in her eye that said, for once, Isane's younger sister was happy.

And Isane was too.


End file.
